HOW MUCH IS A CONDUCTOR WORTH?
Houston Symphony lags in compensation
Orchestral conducting is an inscrutable business, often swaddled in an aura of mystery.
Most people have no idea what these maestros do outside the handful of concerts they lead each year. So it’s no surprise that the general population has little clue as to how much these conductors make each year, beyond the vague perception that it’s “a lot” of money.
And it certainly can be. Especially in Dallas, where recent reports reveal that the leader of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra was paid more than $5 million for the 201314 season. Comparatively, Houston’s conductor earned just $354,575.
Feel free to take a moment or two to pick your jaw off the floor. Whether it’s the sheer amount of money or the wide margin in compensation for the conductors in Texas’ two major cities, the numbers can be startling. And not just to the layperson. Every year, Chicago-based arts consultant Drew McManus
raises the cone of silence on conductors’ salaries in the U.S. His annual findings, which come from IRS 990 forms, are always keenly studied by people in the music business. His recent report, released in June, sent minor shock waves through the classical music scene by showing the wide salary gaps between conductors in major cities, and that large sum Dallas paid its maestro, Jaap van Zweden.
His $5,110,538 is a record-breaking figure — more than twice what his colleagues leading the orchestras of New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or any other major symphony orchestra earned.
However, there is a reason for the large number.
McManus says that van Zweden’s total remu- neration in 2013-14 was actually two separate fees added together: a base salary of $1,788,997 plus a one-time “retention bonus” of $3,321,541.
According to the Dallas Symphony, the generous bonus “was funded entirely by a restricted gift from one individual given exclusively for this one-time occurrence.”
“Bonuses can be a way to help retain a conductor,” McManus says. “You can say that the individual has to remain with the organization for ‘x’ number of years. But this kind of bonus is usually deferred over the length of the contract. The bonus at Dallas was paid all up front — and that’s unusual.”
It should also be noted that 2013-14 term was also the final season of the Houston Symphony’s former conductor, Hans Graf. Although McManus hasn’t yet posted any salary figures for Houston Symphony’s current music director, Andrés Orozco-Estrada, a spokesperson for the orchestra said he is being compensated in the “mid$500,000 range.”
Still, that’s quite a bit less than the $1.7 million salary paid to his counterpart in Dallas.
So why is the Houston conductor earning so much less?
A partial explanation can be found in the overall budgets for the two orchestras. In 2013-14, the Dallas Symphony’s expenditures totaled $36,774,016. Houston parted with about 20 percent less, at $29,399,965. Dallas had about $6 million more than Houston to spend — and much of it ended up in its conductor’s pocket.
Also, over the course of a year, the Dallas Symphony sees more of its conductor than does Houston. Van Zweden spends 16 weeks per season with his orchestra, but Orozco-Estrada spends just 12 weeks leading the Houston Symphony.
There’s also the value of reputation.
Van Zweden, a 55-yearold Dutchman, had an impressive career as a violinist — he was the youngest concertmaster ever to play in Amsterdam’s famous Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra — before he turned to conducting in 1997.
He was appointed conductor of the Dallas Symphony in 2008 and was recently snapped up by the New York Philharmonic, and will assume the position of music director of the NYPO in the 2018-19 season.
On the other hand, Houston’s conductor is less experienced. The 38-year-old OrozcoEstrada, originally from Colombia, was named music director of the Houston Symphony just two years ago.
McManus offers yet another possible explanation.
“Part of a music director’s responsibilities,” he points out, “are artistic — which are subjective. The other part of the job is things like fundraising and promotion. So there could be evidence that Jaap did an excellent job with the fundraising portion of his duties. If the organization was able to pull in a higher amount of contributions and could attribute this to Jaap’s interaction with donors, that could potentially explain his salary.”
About the only thing that can be said with certainty, when surveying the uneven landscape of conductors’ salaries, is that apples-to-apples comparisons can’t really be made. No two symphony orchestras are exactly alike, and every orchestra inhabits its own economic reality.
What an orchestra pays its conductor is a reflection of that reality.