PAYDAY

posted by James Reel

    Adaptistration’s Drew McManus has belatedly released his 2006 report on compensation for executive directors of American orchestras. If you go here to look at his chart, you’ll see that Tucson Symphony executive director Susan Franano makes $96,440 in an organization whose total expenditures are about $4.1 million; meanwhile, the musicians’ base salary is $14,661. Read Drew’s introduction to learn how he got these figures, what they do and do not mean, and what their context is. Orchestras are listed alphabetically. I wish the figures could be resorted by total expenditures, so it would be easier to compare salaries among orchestras in similar budget categories, but that’s a minor complaint; Drew has done the really substantial work of sifting through public records to get the facts.