<p>what's the salary like for a violin/viola professor or orchestra member?
(i.e. top 10 music school and/or top 10 symphony orchestras in the US)</p>
<p>There are several good string sites where you can find this information easily. Remember that it depends upon the person’s skill as as musician and not just where they went to school. And there can be large numbers of people vying for an open position. It’s not enough to toss about terms like “top 10 music school” and especially not "top 10 symphony orchestras in the US’, because the pay scale there can vary widely between the top 3 and the bottom of the list. Why limit one’s self to the US when there are so many opportunities in orchestras world-wide?
[Orchestra</a> Curiosity](<a href=“http://www.violinist.com/discussion/response.cfm?ID=20210]Orchestra”>Orchestra Curiosity)</p>
<p>Depends on the school or orchestra. In something like the NY Philharmonic, the pay scale is easily into 6 figures and a principal makes a lot more then a typical line player…plus many of the musicians in the orchestras teach privately, which adds to their income, plus they will often be paid to do summer music festivals and such. Boston and Philadelphia have similar pay scales. Other top level regionals might pay in the upper end of 5 figures (60k-80k), depends on the city where they are. Again, many make significant money teaching,one of my son’s old teachers was a member of an orchestra in that range, and they had somewhere around 12-15 students they saw weekly, and they were charging around 80 an hour at the time…(and mostly done on a cash basis, i might add:). </p>
<p>After that pay levels drop precipitously as you go down the music food chain, from regional </p>
<p>Not sure about at music school, I suspect it depends on whether they are full time faculty (i.e full load of students) or are a performer type who take very few students…also depends on the music school, I suspect a member of the violin faculty at a smaller school is probably making a lot less then a member of CIM, NEC, etc…</p>
<p>One thing to note is that for most violin/viola players unless in a major orchestra they generally cobble together a living, lot of them play in a number of smaller orchestras, do gigs (subbing in major orchestras, sometimes musical theater, etc, depending on where they live, playing as backup to a live show), plus teach privately and do summer music festival gigs, so it is hard to tell exactly what incomes are like for many players.</p>