Comp tickets
Hello fellow orchestra community,
I’m a tenured member of a full time orchestra and I’ve been struggling with my administration regarding comp tickets. They deny my request most of the time and and the times I do get one it’s like pulling teeth. I just want my wife whose a big fan of us to come enjoy the concerts without having to pay $200+ every month. Things have been getting pretty tight lately, you know?
Anyway, my personnel manager told me recently that he could make a better case if I could provide any info that says that offering or providing comp tickets on request is standard practice in other orchestras in the US. However, that particular info has been pretty hard to find. If anyone could potentially point me in the right direction, or maybe offer their own experience regarding the topic, I’d grately appreciate it. Is it standard practice where you work? Is it a given you’d get comp tickets when/wherever you play? Is it a reasonable thing to expect?
Also, I apologize if this isn’t the correct place to ask about this.
If you are in an ICSOM group, I recommend asking your ICSOM rep to post about this in the delegate-L chain. That would be the fastest way to gather responses from other orchestras around the country so you can establish what “industry standards” are for this topic. But without language about comps in your CBA, there is probably nothing you will be able to impose/enforce on your management. Most groups probably see comps as a courtesy to their musicians and a way to help fill up a concert hall, not a required benefit of the musicians and staff’s compensation packages.
What @notabassplayer said is also true in my orchestra- we have a huge hall and we often get 1-4 comp tickets for classical programs, but we often don’t get any comps for films and pop artists since they tend to sell quite well.