“Boston has some of the best musicians in the country,” Gautille said. He estimated session musicians lost five semesters worth of gigs as a result. Gautille also took issue with the fact that Berklee outsourced demo recording sessions to an orchestra in Budapest during the pandemic. “I decided to stop accepting the gig because it paid so badly,” James said. She recalled one session in 2016 that paid about half what she would normally expect to earn for an orchestral gig.
McKinley James, a cellist who went to New England Conservatory, remembered doing a few recording sessions for composers at Berklee while she was a student at NEC. Other musicians echoed Gautille’s criticisms. And most of these younger musicians have mountains of student debt, instrument loans, all sorts of issues." Patrick Hollenbeckīerklee's faculty union president did not respond to a request for comment. “We live in an area where the expenses are high.
And most of these younger musicians have mountains of student debt, instrument loans, all sorts of issues. “Obviously, it goes without saying it’s inadequate,” Hollenbeck said of Berklee’s $30-an-hour rate. Session rates set by the American Federation of Musicians average about $42 an hour or more, depending on the instrument, time of day and length of the session, said Patrick Hollenbeck, president of the union's Boston chapter. The current wage rate is periodically reviewed, and an adjustment is currently under consideration." "Professional musicians engaged for these sessions are compensated for their work. "Students enrolled in Berklee’s Contemporary Writing and Production (CWP) major are provided, as part of their educational experience, the opportunity to have their work recorded by an orchestra in order to create original demos," the statement read, in part. And it's like, if they're trying to train the next generation and they're not going to pay them once they're out - I mean, it's unconscionable.”īerklee declined to make its president, Erica Muhl, available for comment, instead providing a written statement. “We're not being paid appropriately by a college that's trying to train the next generation of musicians. “What Berklee is doing is kind of existential for all musicians,” Gautille said. “We're not being paid appropriately by a college that's trying to train the next generation of musicians." Adam Gautille Instead, in a meeting in January with members of Berklee’s Contemporary Writing and Production Department, he was told there was no budget to increase the rate, Gautille said. “I had this maybe misplaced hope that Berklee was going to follow through and, you know, pay musicians properly, because in 2014, I had the evidence that they were to raise the rate for musicians,” Gautille said in an interview.
He convinced the school to bump the rate to $30 an hour, and pitched a plan to raise it gradually over five years to $36 an hour, which would put it more in line with typical union rates for similar gigs. Gautille said that when he started, Berklee paid these session musicians $20 an hour.
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His job was to hire orchestral musicians to perform demos of original compositions by the students, for use in the students’ professional portfolios. Gautille, a trumpet player from Jamaica Plain, began organizing recording sessions for Berklee’s Contemporary Writing and Production Department in 2014. “How can an organization charge top dollar for training, but the second you are out will under pay you?” Gautille wrote in a Facebook post earlier this week. He shared a similar message on Twitter. But a former contractor says the school refuses to pay musicians top-tier rates.Īdam Gautille quit his regular gig contracting freelance musicians for recording sessions at Berklee when the school refused to raise its hourly rate, he said. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)īoston’s Berklee College of Music consistently ranks among the world’s top-tier music conservatories.
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