The soloist in the Elgar concerto works at a supermarket checkout
mainAnother angle on musicians’ wages.
Svetlana Jones is a Russian-trained musician on the north island of New Zealand.
This week, she gets a rare chance to play the Elgar cello concerto.
Most days, she works at the grocery till.
Read here.
Oh my
It’s Elgar’s Checkout Concerto for 5p bag and bow.
It simply means that performers begin to reach the income levels of composers.
You do what you have to do. Preparing a concerto while working at a real* job is hard. Good for her.
(* by “real,” I mean a job where people don’t assume that you must do it for free)
+1.
When attending the opera or a concert, I bring an extra cough drop (or throat lozenge) with me, in case someone nearby needs one.
?
The area’s population is 110,000. Can anyone compare musician pay scales in cities of similar size?
The entire population is New Zealand is less than the city of Melbourne.
This is somewhat not comparable but a few famous concert violinists used to play in hotels and cafes until they got some type of break. Everyone needs luck on their side.
If one can afford it jobs in groceries are like actors taking jobs as waiters. It is easy to find another job or rearrange one’s work schedule to accommodate performances and unlike other things, for ex. working as a full time music teacher in the government school system, it does not require a lot of emotional or intellectual energy, time outside of the regular work day, or set hours that cannot be changed easily