Help re: getting into pit orchs in a new city!

Aubstopper

So I'm currently in the LA area and playing in a few pit orchestras for community theater...doing "My Fair Lady" (oboe/eh) and starting West Side Story on the 25th playing the infamous Reed III doubling nightmare.

HOWEVER, i'm moving to Chicago in a few months to go to graduate school and I was hoping to get a little bit of extra dough on the side playing in pits. I don't expect to get paid at first, obviously, but i figured that i might as well try to get just a little extra money for something that i'd basically do for free.

My primary instruments are oboe and english horn...and I can play (and have played) at a professional level (in orchestras, pit orchestras, chamber music, bands, etc) all the saxes, clarinet, bass clarinet, flute, piccolo, oboe, english horn, and bassoon. I own most of those instruments and i'm proficient on all of them.

how do i even begin to start looking for jobs in pits? In the past i've gotten jobs because i knew this person or that person or because I was just known around by word of mouth...where do i begin to look for audition announcements? should i call around and try to make connections? Should i join a union?

I really don't know how this works, because people have always come to me...and I'm not familiar at all with the Chicago area.

Any advice would be appreciated :)
 
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Chicago is definitely a union town when it comes to the major city and suburban theatres. You will see the same names all the time on the playbills. There are a lot of community and local college groups that hire talented amateurs and semi-pros, and there are some pretty good community college orchestras (College of DuPage comes to mind) where you might make some good contacts.

Another way to make contact might be to take a few lessons with one of the regulars on the main circuit. One name I see all the time on the pre-Broadway shows is Jim Gailloreto. Google him, and you will find a lot of info. There's also a bari player who is in Jersey Boys. His name escapes me at the moment, but perhaps Ed will chime in.
 
Ted Hogarth plays bari and bass clarinet in Jersey Boys.
 
I'd second the decision about joining the union. While the union will not do one thing about getting you work, iffen you are not in the union, you will have zero chance in Chicago of working in a union "shop". So, if you get the opportunity, you will have to go through the trouble of joining anyway.

(It's a bit different down here, in that Texas is a "Right To Work" state. What that means in Federal legal terms is that you don't have to belong to the union in order to work in a union workplace. However, every non-member in such a group dilutes the bargaining power of the ones who do belong, and you won't be very popular as a result (or get any "back door" referrals).)

In addition to belonging to the union, you need to develop ties in the community as soon as you can. When we moved down here in 1991, I immediately developed a listing of community orchestras and other groups. With the orchestras, it was a matter of being an available bass clarinet player in order to get the foot into the door. From those, I met others who did pit work, and from that I got into the commercial field.

Had I been in the area in which I grew up (Saint Louis metro), I could have had all the work that I wanted, simply through referrals and my union membership. Here, it took almost ten years.
 
SOTSDO said:
I'd second the decision about joining the union. While the union will not do one thing about getting you work, iffen you are not in the union, you will have zero chance in Chicago of working in a union "shop". So, if you get the opportunity, you will have to go through the trouble of joining anyway.

(It's a bit different down here, in that Texas is a "Right To Work" state. What that means in Federal legal terms is that you don't have to belong to the union in order to work in a union workplace. However, every non-member in such a group dilutes the bargaining power of the ones who do belong, and you won't be very popular as a result (or get any "back door" referrals).)

In addition to belonging to the union, you need to develop ties in the community as soon as you can. When we moved down here in 1991, I immediately developed a listing of community orchestras and other groups. With the orchestras, it was a matter of being an available bass clarinet player in order to get the foot into the door. From those, I met others who did pit work, and from that I got into the commercial field.

Had I been in the area in which I grew up (Saint Louis metro), I could have had all the work that I wanted, simply through referrals and my union membership. Here, it took almost ten years.
Click to expand...

This is the AFM, right?

How do you go about finding these community orchestras and such? Because i'm very unfamiliar with the area...only having been to the airport a few times...In Chicago, i'm going to be living in Hyde Park, near UChicago (where i'm going for grad school)...

When I was living in Israel I played with the Hebrew University orchestra and the principal oboist was the one who connected me to everyone...by the end i ended up a member of the israeli amateur chamber music players' association, some Israeli woodwind association, and finished off playing with the Jerusalem Symphony.

That certainly was an odd year, because i just sort of ended up in places...in LA i just knew people...

I don't have 10 years to break in! I really hope i'm not in grad school for that long :p
 
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