Almost none of these offer any remuneration, but some of them feature really fine players from top to bottom, as well as really talented directors.
Here are a couple of quirky things that I've noticed (attending a few such concerts and - now - recent participation of my own) that don't really happen with lower level (FOR remuneration) lower level symphony orchestras:
- tuning:
It seems as though high level wind bands seem to embrace tuning (to the principal oboe or clarinet) as a real thing (and not ceremonial, which it actually is). If they play a B flat, I can tell that some people actually believe they are tuning, because some are physically changing their instruments, and some of these bands even go so far as to play both a B-flat and an A. (Okay, I've noticed that maybe two or three out of sixteen violinists fiddle with their instruments as well, but they put them right back the way they were ...LOL)
- sound check:
Even if the dress rehearsal was held in the hall where the performance is scheduled to be, they often show up an hour early and spend time corporately (rather than individually in the wings, etc ) - on a sound check, which is basically a thirty to forty-five minute rehearsal (often overlapping patrons entering the hall, but perhaps sometimes the doors to the hall are locked until this is over). Sound checks make sense (to me) when there is some amplification involved or for the first time with singers on stage (such as the traveling Broadway shows, whereby the pit band rehearses out in the lobby from mid-morning to early afternoon going through the entire show one time, and then the sound check involves being amplified in the pit and playing through a few passages with some of the leads in the show), but - if the amplification is in place during the dress rehearsal (such as with a symphony orchestra pops concert) - then it doesn't make sense, and typically the only microphone on stage (with wind bands, at wind band concerts) is near the podium for the music director to chat with the audience between every two or three pieces or so...
... It just seems to me that actually believing that players need to check the length of their instruments when the temperature of the room is always somewhere around 73° or so - along with doing a dress rehearsal after a dress rehearsal - demonstrates some sort of (unjustified) lack of confidence, when - particularly in the cases outlined above - there (again) really shouldn't be any lack of confidence.
"wind symphony" (as part of the name for a wind band)
Only a very small percentage of compositions - including multi-movement compositions - composed for wind bands are designated a "symphonies". Symphony orchestras are called that because they play a lot of symphonies. Arguably, America's finest wind bands are its military bands, and the very finest of those call themselves "bands".
... so in this thread you can criticize and tear me apart for noticing these things.
Oh, and on the symphony orchestra side of criticizing things that go on with symphony orchestras (particularly the lower level paid ones), here's something really annoying about orchestra concerts over the last two or three decades:
It's 7:30 p.m. or 8:00 p.m. and time for the downbeat. Instead of the concertmaster coming out and doing the ceremonial tuning thing, the executive director comes out and chit chats for five or ten minutes about all sorts of blather, delaying the start of the concert. It's very anti-climactic as opposed to at least getting the tuning thing over within twenty or thirty seconds (as the tuning thing itself should actually be dispensed with, as it's archaic).
... Rather than ruining the mood of the concert, if the executive director really feels as though it's important to chit chat with the audience, they should do this AFTER INTERMISSION and NOT at the beginning of the concert.
