TromboneChat

Hi All -

A colleague just contacted me about this piece. A student of his has just won a spot in a Concerto competition at a small college with this work. The strings parts (the piece is for solo trombone & strings) are listed as a $500 rental. Does anyone know of a legal place to find a more affordable set of parts to be used. Obviously, the $500 is out of the question for a student who won't be receiving a pay check, and that amount could be a major portion of the school's annual budget for music rentals. Again, I emphasize LEGAL solutions to the problem - not looking to put anyone in a bind, and I respect a publisher's right to earn a profit on their products.

Thanks!

Jim Scott

There's a piano reduction. This is one of my favorite pieces to play.

I know about the reduction - he is supposed to play it with orchestra. He probably won the competition playing it with piano, and then was surprised to find out how expensive the orchestral version is to rent.

Anyway, looking for suggestions for finding orchestral parts. Anyone else who teaches at a University, is there a chance your school owns parts that might be available for itoa-library loan?

JS

Surely that is the orchestra's responsibility, as you've said. $500 is absolute chump change. Don't feel bad for these schools -- none of them are hurting for money.

If the rental parts are $500, or for that matter if they are a thing at all, any school that has parts in their library would have illegally copied those parts. You can either buy the parts (usually if the piece is already public domain, or if it's a piece that's never likely to be performed in front of a paying audience) or you can rent them, but usually you can't do both.

Hopefully your friend and his student and the school all just do the right thing, and have the school cough up its pocket money for this wonderful piece.

This is Canada - no huge tuitions. Last time I played a concerto with the Wind Ensemble at a nearby school, their budget for music rentals and purchases for the entire year was $1000 (CDN), about $800 (US). The schools up here don't have endowment funds, nor are there any $50,000/year tuition bills for the students.

There are some cases of pieces that are rental, but have been offered for sale at some point. I'm just doing a little digging to see if that was ever the case, and there is a library copy out there. Not likely, but worth a post here. University libraries will loan items to another school for a small fee to cover shipping, etc. If anyone knows of a copy out there that might fit in that category, please let me know. Thanks!

Worldcat would tell you. I have absolutely used that to find obscure scores/parts and received them through my local library. Didn't know about Canadian schools! Sorry about that comment.

Good luck to you

No worries! It's easy to assume that everyplace is the same with their funding - the arts aren't a big priority for funding in the Canadian university system, with a few exceptions.

Thanks for the tip - I'll check it out!

Maybe the publisher has a different price for a single use like that. It's worth asking.

Great piece, it is owned by Gehrmans in Sweden. Their representative in North America is Boosey & Hawkes, USA. Their price will be negotiable; they want their pieces to be played. Ask your colleague to explain the situation to Boosey, they will most likely lower the rental price substantially.
Good luck!

Thanks! I'm passing this info along.

Jim Scott

Boosey and Hawkes has rental fees based on the size of the orchestra. If you come in as the Calgary Symphony with an annual budget in the millions of dollars the fee is much higher than, say, my orchestra with an annual budget of $50,000. I'll bet the $500 quote was for the large orchestra. Use the finances of the actual group performing the piece -- I'll bet the fee will go down dramatically.

Thanks Bruce! Knowing that there is a N. American distributer is very helpful in all of this - long distance calls/emails to Sweden would have added to the difficulty of sorting this out.