Making Music with Less

LIKE many musicians who play for the handful of small professional orchestras outside of New York City these days, Gabriel Schaff, a violinist, is struggling to cobble together a living. Mr. Schaff, 49, has contracts that guarantee work with four orchestras, including the Stamford Symphony Orchestra and Long Island Philharmonic. He substitutes in others, including the Westfield Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey. And he takes side work, like Broadway shows, in between.

But side work has grown scarcer as Broadway retrenches. Substitute jobs are in shorter supply. Nearly all the orchestras Mr. Schaff regularly plays for are offering less work than in the past, because of the economic downturn. And one of those groups, the Opera Orchestra of New York, has just canceled its two remaining shows this season at Carnegie Hall, citing significant reductions in “all areas of public support.”

“It has forced me into a part-time, hand-to-mouth existence,” said Mr. Schaff, who commutes to his various jobs from his home in Harrington Park, N.J.

To try to balance their annual budgets, which range up to $2 million, many of these smaller orchestras in the suburbs that use professional musicians have reduced rehearsal time, shortened their seasons and scaled back productions.

In addition to the Long Island Philharmonic, the Stamford Symphony and the Westfield Symphony, regional orchestras in the New York region include groups like the Westchester Philharmonic; the Hartford Symphony Orchestra and the New Haven Symphony Orchestra in Connecticut; and, in New Jersey, the Colonial Symphony, the Garden State Philharmonic and the New Philharmonic of New Jersey. These ensembles have part-time schedules but full-time professional players.

In contrast, community orchestras — groups like the St. Thomas Orchestra in Westchester, the North Shore Symphony Orchestra on Long Island and the Bloomfield Symphony Orchestra in New Jersey — are composed largely of amateurs who work for little or no money. Though community orchestras may employ professional “ringers” who fill out sections and are paid, their organizational structures tend to be less like full-time orchestras’ than are the regional orchestras’.

For the professional musicians, rehearsal time has emerged as a major point of contention. It is often the first thing orchestras trim, since such cuts are not visible to the public. For some organizations, the first deep reductions in rehearsal time began during the economic slump that followed the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. For example, that is when the Stamford Symphony replaced four preconcert sessions of 2 ½ hours each with three sessions of three hours.