It's harvesting time
or three ways to find you some more gigs
Sometimes working freelance can be a pain in the behind and every now an then we all need either a hug or a juicy kick in that afore mentioned body part.
German radio choirs are in great demand of singers and pay very respectable fees per day plus expenses! Due to certain regulations, they can only employ freelancers for a set number of days until they would have to be offered a solid contract. That’s why there’s still a big demand for new singers, because plenty are waiting for the season to pass by in order to rejoin as a substitute.
OK, CO2 -balance kept in mind, I still recommend going for that. This particular orange airline offers so many great deals into most German cities, who could possibly resist the temptation? Apart from that, you might find yourself quite amused filling your spare time wandering around major German cities like Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Leipzig or Stuttgart? Oh, I forgot to mention: German radio choirs never sing more than 3.5 hours per day - that’s either rehearsing or concert - or both!
Don’t sh*t your knickers be too worried about your language skills. You should at least require a tiny bit to understand, but nobody will ever request you to become fluent in German! Especially if you’re a serious contralto, a dark bass or a tenor (of course), do apply sooner rather than later!
The repertoire and therefore their demand in voices alters depending on the main focus of the cief conductor. Rias Kammerchor and the choir of the Bayrische Rundfunk are definitively aimed more towards early music, whereas MDR and Rundfunkchor Berlin lean more towards late romantic and SWR Vokalensemble and WDR Rundfunkchor have their main focus on contemporary compositions. They all do the whole range, it’s just the balance that matters. Usually the contracts for the chief conductors last about five years, so everything can actually end up the other way round.
Make sure you are fairly well prepared in sight reading. Your German colleagues are usually very bad in this discipline, so if you come from an UK, USA or French background, you should just do very well and that makes up for non existing fluent German language skills.
You will find a list of all German radio choirs (they are all worth auditioning for!1!!) websites at the end of this blog post.
Milk that bi*$h!
OK, I'm not a friend of the imperative, but let me make just this once an exception: You must visit your colleagues websites and assemble a list of their important gigs. I do that from time to time and put all the info into a spreadsheet at Google docs - that’s my own harvesting time. Quit that guilt-thing. It’s your job as a freelancer, so get on with it. Don’t feel bad if you’re going to audition with a conductor that your friend’s just had a gig with! In the end it’s the conductor’s choice who gets the next gig. And the worst outcome would be, that you’d have to file the experience under “yet another audition experience”.
If that’s not already the case, and you find yourself walking around seeing an advert for an upcoming concert anywhere you are in the world, there is no excuse for not quickly taking a picture of that ad for considering to apply for an audition later on. The opening e-mail to a conductor couldn’t be be better than: “I just read in this’n that paper that you did a very well received performance of this’n that piece... etc.
Try getting an agent
If you’re looking for agents, operabse.org could become your friend! They have put together a huge database of all sorts of information that is particularly interesting for the freelancer trying to get into business with an agency and the opera world in general. You will not believe how easy it is: Send them an a very short e-mail with your CV, a picture and preferably a recording as MP3 file and you will see that most of them reply kindly. They may not come up with the response you’d hoped for, but at least you tried! That’s the spirit we need! Send out the vibes that you’re hot for jobs and there will be an outcome!
I shall now shut up and sing.
M
or three ways to find you some more gigs
Sometimes working freelance can be a pain in the behind and every now an then we all need either a hug or a juicy kick in that afore mentioned body part.
German radio choirs are in great demand of singers and pay very respectable fees per day plus expenses! Due to certain regulations, they can only employ freelancers for a set number of days until they would have to be offered a solid contract. That’s why there’s still a big demand for new singers, because plenty are waiting for the season to pass by in order to rejoin as a substitute.
OK, CO2 -balance kept in mind, I still recommend going for that. This particular orange airline offers so many great deals into most German cities, who could possibly resist the temptation? Apart from that, you might find yourself quite amused filling your spare time wandering around major German cities like Cologne, Hamburg, Berlin, Munich, Leipzig or Stuttgart? Oh, I forgot to mention: German radio choirs never sing more than 3.5 hours per day - that’s either rehearsing or concert - or both!
Don’t sh*t your knickers be too worried about your language skills. You should at least require a tiny bit to understand, but nobody will ever request you to become fluent in German! Especially if you’re a serious contralto, a dark bass or a tenor (of course), do apply sooner rather than later!
The repertoire and therefore their demand in voices alters depending on the main focus of the cief conductor. Rias Kammerchor and the choir of the Bayrische Rundfunk are definitively aimed more towards early music, whereas MDR and Rundfunkchor Berlin lean more towards late romantic and SWR Vokalensemble and WDR Rundfunkchor have their main focus on contemporary compositions. They all do the whole range, it’s just the balance that matters. Usually the contracts for the chief conductors last about five years, so everything can actually end up the other way round.
Make sure you are fairly well prepared in sight reading. Your German colleagues are usually very bad in this discipline, so if you come from an UK, USA or French background, you should just do very well and that makes up for non existing fluent German language skills.
You will find a list of all German radio choirs (they are all worth auditioning for!1!!) websites at the end of this blog post.
Milk that bi*$h!
OK, I'm not a friend of the imperative, but let me make just this once an exception: You must visit your colleagues websites and assemble a list of their important gigs. I do that from time to time and put all the info into a spreadsheet at Google docs - that’s my own harvesting time. Quit that guilt-thing. It’s your job as a freelancer, so get on with it. Don’t feel bad if you’re going to audition with a conductor that your friend’s just had a gig with! In the end it’s the conductor’s choice who gets the next gig. And the worst outcome would be, that you’d have to file the experience under “yet another audition experience”.
If that’s not already the case, and you find yourself walking around seeing an advert for an upcoming concert anywhere you are in the world, there is no excuse for not quickly taking a picture of that ad for considering to apply for an audition later on. The opening e-mail to a conductor couldn’t be be better than: “I just read in this’n that paper that you did a very well received performance of this’n that piece... etc.
Try getting an agent
If you’re looking for agents, operabse.org could become your friend! They have put together a huge database of all sorts of information that is particularly interesting for the freelancer trying to get into business with an agency and the opera world in general. You will not believe how easy it is: Send them an a very short e-mail with your CV, a picture and preferably a recording as MP3 file and you will see that most of them reply kindly. They may not come up with the response you’d hoped for, but at least you tried! That’s the spirit we need! Send out the vibes that you’re hot for jobs and there will be an outcome!
I shall now shut up and sing.
M
It's harvesting time
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