I've told y'all this before...

[bloke]

This is what many corporate owners/managers and (possibly) people orchestra boards ACTUALLY think of classical music:

https://wreg.com/news/local/memphis-sto ... ight-crime

If they donate to local orchestras, they may well actually not like (or even DISlike) classical music, and may well only be doing so to show (like Charlie the Tuna) that they have good taste, or - simply - to become politically connected (with the motive being eventually seeking a local political appointment or elected office).

(Even though we like PLAYING classical music - and might even like listening to others play it, occasionally - only a very small percentage of all people do, and even a smaller percentage would even consider leaving home to attend - even if free/top-notch - a classical music concert. If someone is young, spending several years of their own energetic/great-health youth and going into debt learning how to play the tuba - unless they're perfectly happy looking forward towards the community band/orchestra or school band director scene - or maybe playing the SSB and marches when generals arrive while skipping dinner most days to keep one's weight down to 175 lbs. - many/most "serious" and "conservatory" tuba students might wish to start looking at other styles, and learning a few hundred songs in each of the styles that larger percentages of people patronize...If nothing else, perhaps they should learn the specific funky bass lines to the various strains of several dozen NOLA brass band tunes - as that seems to have become a nationwide "thing".)

To achieve being offered a job as (against dozens-or-a-hundred other applicants) "Principal Tuba of the East Mckeesport Philharmonia" - or even the Professor of Low Brass at The University of Maliprop (playing/teaching "classical" music) is to play/teach music for which the consumer market is extremely small, and - as society continues to degrade - continues to shrink.

sustainability of orchestra and university positions:

orchestras:
When (ex. of a very modest-paying full-time orchestra) there are 65 players each being paid (incl. benefits, etc.) $45,000, tickets are $40 - $60, there are tons of other large costs not even mentioned here, and two monthly concerts attach 450 - 500 attendees per concert, that is what can be identified as "non-sustainable" - particularly with those donating the majority of the funding required having been dying off - over the past two or three decades.

professors of low-brass:
More-and-more often, these positions are filled by adjuncts or one-year "visiting professors" (with no real institutional intentions of ever upgrading these positions).

more:
My own son-in-law is in a (not officially "big five", but) big-five-ish orchestra. With food/fuel/utilities/house prices having doubled in the same time period, my son-and-law has experienced TWO pay cuts. Full-time orchestra boards are actively hiring negotiators who are experts in strong-arming pay cuts to groups of employees, when contract negotiations come back around, each time. (OK... [1] The demand for orchestra musicians is - in reality - completely artificial, and [2] the market is flooded with competent applicants.)

[arpthark]

professors of low-brass:
More-and-more often, these positions are filled by adjuncts or one-year "visiting professors" (with no real institutional intentions of ever upgrading these positions).

+100

Even though I was on this track in another discipline (music theory and composition), the same is true (and likely is across all academic music fields) and is what helped dissuade me from academia. Presenting at national and international conferences, busting my @$$ writing articles and doing research, poring through archives until 11pm, teaching, grading the same part-writing mistakes over and over... you have to take a step back and ask "for what?" To get a job as Visiting Adjunct Professor of Music Theory and Low Brass at Southwest Idaho Potato Farmer's Institute of Music making $35k a year, uprooting your family, to teach future myoosick edjucashen stoodunts? I had a bit of a quarter-life-crisis.

Some folks have escaped this grind, have gotten tenure track positions (some of my PhD classmates, even) and are doing well.

But, the system isn't sustainable. That's incredibly evident. There are going to have to be big changes down the pipeline, and those changes are gonna hurt.

[bloke]

Below is even more true than anything above:

No one really cares about anyone other than (if they're lucky) their mama - as long as Mama's still alive.

To most any employer (no matter how personable their in-person behavior) an employee is thought of as if a rake or a shovel.

[bort2.0]

To most any employer (no matter how personable their in-person behavior) an employee is thought of as if a rake or a shovel.

Yeah, but if you do real good and don't cause trouble, you get to rake and shovel the good dirt.

[Mary Ann]

I actually used this as an example for a friend who was taken in by someone who was giving him private lessons in how to make money in the stock market. I said, if he is so good at making money in the stock market, why does he have to sell himself to give lessons to others? It's like teaching horn at a university --- have a job teaching others to do what you can't yourself make a living at. It makes no sense and quite wasting your money. And of course my friend lost his shirt in the stock market.
I am so glad I wised up when I hit 30 and saw that I'd never be able to buy a house, own a new vehicle, or have a retirement. The engineering degree took seven years and was the best thing I EVER did. I can still love music and have the best fun with it and am not reduced to being on the same level as the dishwasher at a party. Yes, it was worth all the time and effort to get good at it, but more worth it to realize what it could and could not do for me.

[bloke]

To most any employer (no matter how personable their in-person behavior) an employee is thought of as if a rake or a shovel.

Yeah, but if you do real good and don't cause trouble, you get to rake and shovel the good dirt.

I admit to being the same:

THE reason that we do NOT have employees is because so many of them seem to wish for US to be their mama.

[Three Valves]

Yes, it was worth all the time and effort to get good at it, but more worth it to realize what it could and could not do for me.

This is the same realization that overwhelmed me about my military "career"

Very well stated.

[dp]

edit: I changed my mind its not worth commenting on...I

[Dents Be Gone!]

I agree, guys. This is the way to go.

[bloke]

At least, I managed to troll dp.

[Casca Grossa]

At least, I managed to troll dp.

pppfffttt