Brass quintet rates

[kingrob76]

At one point in the D.C. area a good hour-long quintet gig would net each player $100, or $500 total. The number would go down a bit with more hours, say $250 a player for 3 hours. If I got that for a gig today I'd still feel pretty good about those rates, but I'm older and lazier. I also know this is influenced by the market - an hour in L.A. would get more then an hour in someplace like, say, Topeka. So, what kind of rates are reasonable today? At what point do you say yes / no to a gig? If someone called you for 4 hours of playing (let's say 2 church services and a rehearsal beforehand) what would you expect?

[Three Valves]

$100-$500 is a big spread!!

I’m pretty sure a wedding band would be $1200+ so...

[kingrob76]

$100-$500 is a big spread!!

$100 per person / $500 total

[Three Valves]

I told my wife if she can get a quintet to play at my funeral for -1k to hire them!!

Else, I’ll settle for a cello or harp player.

[bloke]

I told Mrs. bloke that if she has ANY kind of funeral for me, I will haunt her.
- NO skin painters
- NO box
- NO rock
- NO white Neru-collared numbskull w/index cards
- I have a card in my pocket whereby the local medical school picks me up and gets rid of me - at their expense - when they’re done with me.
If they renege, she’s to call the county, and tell them that she’s got something they need to pick up and haul away.

I told my wife if she can get a quintet to play at my funeral for -1k to hire them!!

Else, I’ll settle for a cello or harp player.

[the elephant]

College graduation today.
Call time 8:30
Finished @ 10:45 (small school)
With a drummer
$2500.00

[bort2.0]

When I got married, I think the BQ that I called quoted us $900 for the first 90 minutes, plus $50 for each addl 15 mins.

So, like $500/hour, basically

I thought it would've been cool, but also thought an extra $1,000 for better open bar would go a bit farther. I *am* a tuba player, after all ...

[kingrob76]

College graduation today.
Call time 8:30
Finished @ 10:45 (small school)
With a drummer
$2500.00

Was that a quintet?

[bloke]

Markets are different.
Money goes farther where I live, where a pretty nice modern house can still be found for $2XXK - $3XXK, whereas a similar-amenities updated (but drab/red-brick) house - built during World War II and put on a postage stamp lot in Arlington Virginia - demands well over $1 million to acquire, and demands ten times as much annual property tax to be able to keep it (just one example of endless reasons why nationalizing things is a bad idea…but I digress)...
...so a generous rate somewhere may be a chintzy rate somewhere else...and different entities have different budgets. As Wade demonstrated, institutions tend to have more money to spend than individuals (and budgets vary widely from one church to the next)...but I believe it’s a mistake to turn down a gig where some decent money can be made, just because a married couple can’t afford to pay a brass quintet (or jazz band, or polka band, or whatever) as much money as a college or corporation could afford to pay a brass quintet.
Negotiating skills come into play, to be to be able to feel out how much find funding is available, and to be able to receive as much of what’s available as possible. Many times, it’s just better to let the client run their mouth for a while, and they end up revealing their budget.
If someone only has $250 available for five people to show up to some convenient location and play one song, a group can turn that down, but everyone in the group will also be $50 short of where they could’ve been...whereas each of those five musicians could have stopped on the way home with that $50 cash in their pockets, and picked up enough milk, white bread, chicken thighs, green beans and other modestly-priced foods to feed themselves for a few days. Otherwise, if the same entity is ready to pay $1000 for that same thing to happen, it’s the duty of the leader or a booking agent to figure out how much money is in the pocket of the client.

[Three Valves]

I told Mrs. bloke that if she has ANY kind of funeral for me, I will haunt her.
- NO skin painters
- NO box
- NO rock
- NO white Neru-collared numbskull w/index cards
- I have a card in my pocket whereby the local medical school picks me up and gets rid of me - at their expense - when they’re done with me.
If they renege, she’s to call the county, and tell them that she’s got something they need to pick up and haul away.

We were invited to the family plot in New Hampshire. We visited, it’s nice, so we’re going!! Later than sooner.

My mom has that donate and dispose of deal. My father’s marker already has the name of his second wife on it so she got the message!!

[the elephant]

College graduation today.
Call time 8:30
Finished @ 10:45 (small school)
With a drummer
$2500.00

Was that a quintet?

Quintet with a drummer, all from the MSO (so an "A List" group — there are a couple of other groups that use non-MSO payers who charge about half of what we get), but this is *not* the MSO quintet. The symphony's three chamber ensembles all are salaried groups, and the orchestra charges out things differently than the freelance groups, generally being less expensive. Some people hire the MSO's groups as freelance so that they can use the MSO name in their advertising. That is generally more expensive. So the MSO quintet is a bargain if it is an MSO service, but the most expensive group if we are hired freelance and use the orchestra's name. (There are all sorts of rules and practices to determine how an MSO ensemble is hired out.) The group I played with yesterday is all MSO players but has its own name and contracts.