Piano World Home Page Forums Our Most Popular Forums Pianist Corner - Non Classical How much do working jazz musicians earn today?

I can't imagine just a few people taking this on; nobody has enough knowledge. I would think the site would have to be a kind of forum/craigslist/wiki for jazz performers and venues, with user-generated content on a 'when-you-feel-like-it' basis, like those other sites. It would be enough work for a few people just putting together a good and attractive interface.

What I have in mind is a site that operates on a cooperative basis.

It wouldn't be all that big. Remember, there are only a few venues per city. One person with a computer today can do what a hundred people did with nothing but a telephone and the telegraph service 80 years ago.

I have no intention of copying what high-tech sites do. It's simply not necessary.

One job is to gather information on cities, starting with the biggest and best-known, and selecting other cities from there by playing connect-the-dots, so that a basic template in terms of a circuit is created. This is needed for the simple logistics of playing a string of places within easy driving distance.

The musician themselves have to both become part of the database and part of the process, which means that most of the activity will be taking place off-site. When you're on the road, playing at club A, B and C, you will have arranged in advance for billetting and meals, and guys who aren't currently playing would have the job of looking after guys who are on the road.

This is how it was done back in the day. It's not rocket-science. It's just a matter of doing it.

Unfortunately as jazz musicians, we don't live in the time period of jazz and bebop's Golden Era, especially in NYC and parts of Europe. This period was the time of Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Miles Davis, 1940s-50s-60s and the support of the art from the supporting audience and Baroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter, sister of Lord Rothschild, who was very important with her wealth and influence in her sponsorship of the leading jazz musicians like Bird.

The interest and passion to provide jazz education thrives in this time. If this was not so, high end "jazz finishing" schools such as Berklee and New England Conservatory in Boston and USC's Thronton Jazz Studies in Los Angeles would not be providing scholarships for talented jazz students.

It would take the support and financial input of the numerous mega rich Americans who are billionaires who have the resources to invest in an art form that is our unique own, jazz, born and bred in the USA.

These wealthy individuals could support jazz radio stations, scholarships, concerts, trust funds, sponsorships, similar to how the Baroness contributed to the art. But so far, we are not seeing any interest or support for jazz to keep it thriving from the people who have the financial resources and connections to help keep jazz clubs opened, promote the art form and a plethora of other programs that could vastly improve keeping jazz alive and well.

The graphic and musical arts are an important component to a civilized world. But unless some support and interest is stimulated by those who could contribute to the art's development and well being, the dwindling interest will continue to spiral downward. A lot of things that could be done to help aren't being offered. All I know is that in Los Angeles, jazz clubs and gigs are dying out. But things can get better and improve with just a few simple changes as I have stated. Perhaps we will see improvement coming.

katt

If I remember rightly, the new home being built for SFJazz in San Francisco was only able to go ahead after a big anonymous donation. I might be mixing up funding stories, but at any rate it did require some significant donations.

In this case I feel that the mere presence of a stand-alone hall devoted to Jazz helps to communicate that the stuff is worth listening to, and spurs more investment and interest.

One real question is whether jazz will ever more or less completely die out, like ragtime music. Except for extremely isolated and museum-like festivals (people wearing period costumes says that the genre is, today, dead), ragtime is gone.

When I see the newer acts like Brad Mehldau and Esbjoern Svensson (RIP) or Dave Frank I think there is still quite a lot of excitement to be had.

Actually, it could even be said that jazz in some form or other has been one of the longer-lasting music genres. (Even if one takes a somewhat narrow definition of what counts).

It's more grown-up than rock music, more cosmopolitan than folk or country, it's strongly secular as opposed to religious, and more intimate than classical music. For these reasons, I don't think it will die out soon.

Finally, the intimacy of it derives largely from the large role improvisation takes on for jazz.

There is nothing out there that can match all these virtues. But maybe interest is waning for other reasons (if it is waning).

One of the reasons that SF Jazz has thrived is that they have resisted the trend to petrify the music the way that classical music has become. There are a lot of genres that could be termed jazz, and SF Jazz has adopted all of them and more.

Well jazz is kind of going in the way of classical music. I'd like to get feedback from jazz musicains in Europe, because i general they seem to be better off there than in US. One of my teacher said that it's so much more competitive in US, which forces you to keep on improving no matter how well you play.

gsmonks

I can't really help you since I live overseas, but I'd like to see what you do with it.. good luck!!

Hi...I had been playing in bands since 1957 .The 4 piece bands in late 70's early 80' were ruminated with $600 a night for the band..I have friends still playing today and are still getting $600 a gig....musicians are treated like the scum of the earth...this is a reason I haven't played for the public for 25 years...my dignity is more important to me than an ego.......Doug

Has anyone here had any experience with cruise ship work? I saw an agency that advertises on craigslist from time to time and it looks like they are always looking for various acts, from solo piano (background lobby or bar piano) through piano/voice (lounge singer).

I was considering putting together a package to submit for maybe a summer gig next year. If I remember rightly they require a few recordings and a songlist. It's not exactly New York jazz clubs but it seems like a good way to keep up a bunch of songs and build experience with audiences. As I remember, the pay was decent; of course we're talking about playing every day for hours.

Cirque Du Soleil is looking for keyboard players.

http://www.cirquedusoleil.com/en/jobs/casting/home.aspx

Direct link to keyboard jobs

Interesting, but I'm sure there is little creative independence in jobs like that. They say you must be a 'team player', which means this is a job as a member of a troupe.

The attraction of the cruise ship gigs is, for me, that there is a much larger amount of freedom. I'm sure that as long as you stay within recognizable songs most of the time, you can even play an occasional original or more obscure piece (more in the case of a background pianist than as a lounge singer, but I'm no lounge singer anyways).

I haven't played on cruise ships, but have been offered various gigs. You need to be aware that your duties MAY extend beyond just playing. You also may be sharing a cabin. You also may be restricted on where you can be seen on the ship.

The better the gig, the less like prison it is. Another way of looking at it is if you're quite young, and get on the right cruise, you could basically be in for a 2 month long party because you may be surrounded by 20 somethings all looking to hook up.

So, depending on what you are looking for, be sure to read the fine print, and see if you can talk to the actual workers/musicians on the particular ships you are interested in playing on.

Charleslang

From what I've read doing a cruise ship is like doing a show band and you have to be a very good sight reader to do it. according to the website below "sight reading is such a huge part of the audition (and ultimately the contract)"

http://www.musicianwages.com/cruise-ship-musician/cruise-ship-musicians-the-audition-process/

http://www.musicianwages.com/cruise-ship-musician/how-to-get-a-cruise-ship-musician-job/

my friend did cruise ship gig for a while, and he said that basically you have a book of like 200+ charts, and the conductor will shout out the number of the tune and you just have to be able to play them. There was no room for doing any original or something creative.

EDIT:spelling

Thanks for your thoughts, etcetera. I'm sure that's an accurate portrayal of some of the jobs, but the agency I looked at had various job openings available, for various amounts of pay. The lowest paying is, as I said, solo piano as background music in a lobby or bar. There is no conductor. Above that there are various options, from singing/piano combination up to larger ensemble work. It sounds like the one you're describing is this kind of ensemble job.

Scepticalforumguy, thanks for that really interesting information. I hadn't thought about the possibility that they don't want you in some areas of the ship; that's very interesting but understandable.

Asking what working a cruise ship is like is just like asking what working a bar is like, there are many different cruise lines and gigs, and they all work a bit differently.

I meet a competent blues guy who got a gig doing blues in a bar. When he got there, they mostly expected him to play top 100 standards, even if he was hired as a strictly blues musician. He wasn't allowed to bring a keyboard, so he couldn't arrange anything in his room. He shared a room with a cook who couldn't speak English, although the guy worked 12 hour days everyday, so it wasn't a problem.

He hated it, but he went back the following year. He was going to school at the time, and the room and board during the summer was too good to pass up.

I have a friend who spent about six years with a high-end cruise line and really enjoyed it. He's a trombonist and some of his contracts called for him to lead the band, and in those cases he got more pay and better living quarters.

I used to work with a very experienced guitar player who could read and write musical charts and arrangements in Finale, play jazz, oldies, blues, standards and rock. He decided the only work he wanted to do was play 5-6 nights a week anywhere that had a steady gig. He found out the only way to do that was contact the cruise ship agencies and set up a live audition for the show band which requires heavy duty sight reading. He had also played in a big band and was used to charts on the spot.

Anyway, he got his audition time set up near Los Angeles and was called in. He brought in his guitar and plugged into an amp already provided. The music director set some charts up on the music stand and turned on an Aebersold style backing track and gave a 4 count, 1-2-3-4 at about 250 bpm! Well, as good of a reader he was, he couldn't lay that down, so after 3 charts, the audition for the show band was history for him. But the director said that one of the lounge bands had just lost their guitar player and asked him if he was interested in that gig. He was, and the director just randomly called some lounge standards, Knock on Wood, Mustang Sally, Heart of Rock N Roll, Sweet Home Alabama and he played them all. That impressed the director enough that the guitar player was on the ship working full time with the lounge band in a month. That lasted on and off about 10 years.

Although he didn't have the sight reading ability requirement down enough for the show bands, he had the skills to cut it for the lounge band. All the players in the lounge bands were experienced and good enough regardless of their reading skills. Most of the tunes they did on the set list were takedowns anyway from the original records.

There are sites online and blogs written about cruise ship gigs, working conditions, rates, etc. by musicians who actually worked them and their opinions pro and con about the work. Some musicians can hack it, some hate it and leave after their first contract is over. My friend also had a lot of free time to practice, go to the crew gym, hang out, tour port cities, read, whatever. A ship can sometimes not avoid rough weather and the seas are choppy, despite the ship's stabilizers and sea sickness can come on. But ships have doctors and nurses to treat it. Take the patch or pill and you're cured.

He asked me several times if I was interested in playing keyboards in the lounge band and I turned it down because I didn't want to be on a ship full-time.

But the best advice for any musician considering a cruise ship gig is to first, book a 3 day cruise to see how you like travel on the open seas, get online and read the comments and blogs by cruise ship players, talk to some agencies. If you are cut out for this type of work, it can be great, if not, you will know your first week of the tour if you can cut it. There are rumors out there that some cats have had nervous breakdowns after a few weeks on the gig, got freaked out when the ship was out of sight and range of land, like that Kevin Costner flick, "WaterWorld" and had to break the contract or got fired and left off at the next port and had to get back home on their own. Heard one cat hated the gig and ship so much, flipped out and literally jumped off the ship into the water, but was rescued and taken to the hospital.

Now these are worse case scenarios and could be stories and rumors, but many people flip out in a variety of occupations, not just cruise ship gigs. Even some airline attendants have made their own exits off the jet down the slide after a meltdown.

katt