The Real Money Behind America's Top Orchestras
Who gets paid what, and which orchestras ran deficits.
All financial data from IRS Form 990 filings (FY2024) via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Musician base salaries for the 2025-26 season are the published minimums (for Boston and Pittsburgh, a published weekly scale multiplied out to a year) or Cadenza's calculations from published figures, marked est., from each orchestra's own audition pages and contract announcements, its musicians' union, or press reports of the contract, checked on 25 September 2026.
Correction, 25 September 2026: This article has been updated. Six of the seven musician base salaries Cadenza could check did not match the 2025-26 season; those seven now show that season, and the Boston Symphony Orchestra's base is $203,580 (its published $3,915 a week), not $155K. Orchestras whose 2025-26 base Cadenza could not source are no longer ranked, and an unsourced take-home comparison has been removed. Every correction is listed at the end of this article. We are grateful to a Boston Symphony musician who wrote to Cadenza.
At a Glance
Highest 2025-26 Base
$204K
BSO, of 7 ranked
Lowest 2025-26 Base
$113K
Houston, of 7 ranked
Highest Pay Shown Here
$2.7M
Gustavo Dudamel, FY2024
Largest Deficit
-$47.0M
Met Opera, FY2024
Musician Base Salary, 2025-26
The minimum annual base salary for a full-time musician in the 2025-26 season. Only the 7 orchestras whose 2025-26 base Cadenza could source are ranked; “est.” marks a figure Cadenza calculated from a published salary and the published raises.
Ranked by 2025-26 Base Salary
Figures are rounded to the nearest $1,000. Boston: $3,915 a week from 25 August 2025, times 52 weeks. New York: $190,698 for the 52-week season, as the orchestra publishes it. Houston: $113,360, as the orchestra publishes it. Pittsburgh: the 2025-26 weekly scale of $2,237.74 times 52 weeks, plus the annual Electronic Media Guarantee of $2,072.40. National Symphony: $171,879, the year-two base of its 2024 contract, which Cadenza takes as the 2025-26 season. Philadelphia (est.): the union's 2022-23 base of $152,256, including electronic media wages, raised by the contract's 6%, 4.5% and 4.5%. Dallas (est.): the union's 2026-27 figure of $121,645, less that year's 4.5% raise.
Not ranked: Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, the Met Opera, Minnesota and San Francisco. For 2026-27 the Detroit Symphony publishes a minimum annual salary of $117,016, and the San Francisco Symphony a base weekly salary of $3,825 from 1 September 2026 (“approximately $202,000” a year, it says).
A base salary is a minimum before tax. This article does not estimate what a musician keeps after tax and housing, which depend on where and how each musician lives.
The Headline Finding
$203,580
Boston Symphony minimum base, 2025-26
$3,915 a week from 25 August 2025, times 52 weeks
$113,360
Houston Symphony minimum annual salary, 2025-26
As the orchestra publishes it
Among the 7 orchestras whose 2025-26 base Cadenza could source, the minimum for a Boston Symphony musician is $90,220 higher than for a Houston Symphony musician, about 1.8 times as much. The seven fall into two groups: four with a base above $170,000 (Boston, New York, Philadelphia on Cadenza's estimate, and the National Symphony) and three below $120,000 (Pittsburgh, Dallas on Cadenza's estimate, and Houston). The lowest of the first group is $53,444 above the highest of the second.
Who's Getting Paid at the Top
Pay as shown in the compensation column of each organization's IRS Form 990 for FY2024, not counting the separate column of other compensation. That column is the pay reported on each person's W-2 or 1099 for the calendar year ending with or within the fiscal year: for these FY2024 filings, calendar 2023. Examples in each group, not a ranking of all 15 orchestras.
Music Director Pay (FY2024)
Gustavo Dudamel
Music & Artistic Director (FY2024), LA Philharmonic
$2,740,000
Yannick Nézet-Séguin
Music Director (FY2024), Met Opera
$2,045,038
Juraj Valčuha
Music Director (FY2024), Houston Symphony
$638,894
Executive Pay (FY2024)
Deborah Rutter
President, Kennedy Center (FY2024), National Symphony
$1,416,175
Peter Gelb
General Manager (FY2024), Met Opera
$1,395,216
Concertmaster Pay (FY2024)
Frank Huang
Concertmaster (FY2024), NY Philharmonic
$632,321
Alexander Barantschik
Concertmaster (FY2024), SF Symphony
$577,132
Robert Chen
Concertmaster (FY2024), Chicago Symphony
$566,546
The Met Opera Problem
The Metropolitan Opera is in a category of its own, and not in a good way.
Deficit
-$47.0M
FY2024
GM Pay
$1.40M
Peter Gelb, FY2024
Music Director Pay
$2.05M
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, FY2024
Net Assets
$180.2M
FY2024; $240.4M in FY2021
In FY2024 the Met Opera paid its music director $2,045,038 and its general manager $1,395,216. Combined: $3.4 million in executive compensation, in a year in which it ran a $47 million deficit. On 13 July 2025, as the musicians' contract talks went on, Slippedisc reported that Met Orchestra musician Stephanie Mortimore had said on the programme Economic Update: “A 25-year veteran string player in our orchestra is making a few hundred dollars less than they did in 2011.” Moody's downgraded the Met's debt to Caa1 in March 2026, “further into junk”, as OperaWire put it.
Financial Health: Revenue vs. Expenses
Green bars = surplus. Red bars = deficit. From IRS Form 990, FY2024. Two rows are not orchestras' own filings: the National Symphony is an affiliate of the Kennedy Center, and the Atlanta Symphony's executive director is listed on the filing of the Woodruff Arts Center. Those rows are the whole Kennedy Center's and the whole Woodruff Arts Center's figures, not the orchestras' alone.
Net Assets (Endowment + Reserves)
The financial cushion. Larger net assets = more resilience. Houston's negative net assets mean liabilities exceed assets. As in the chart above, the Kennedy Center and Woodruff Arts Center rows are those organizations' whole filings, not the National Symphony's or the Atlanta Symphony's alone.
A Bankruptcy, a Lockout and a Strike
Three of the orchestras above, since 2011.
Bankruptcy
The orchestra filed for bankruptcy in 2011 and emerged a year later.
Lockout
Music Director Osmo Vänskä resigned during the lockout.
Brief strike
After a brief strike, the Kennedy Center and the musicians reached an 18-month agreement raising wages by 4% in year 1 and 4% in year 2.
What This Means for Young Musicians
If you're a conservatory student preparing for orchestral auditions, the data above should reshape how you think about “dream jobs.”
Base salaries differ widely, even among major orchestras. Of the seven whose 2025-26 base Cadenza could source, Boston's $203,580 is $90,220 above Houston's $113,360. A base is a minimum before tax: what it leaves you depends on taxes and housing costs where you would live, which this article does not estimate. Run the numbers for your own situation before you compare offers.
The financial health of the organization matters as much as the salary. The Met Opera ran a $47M deficit in FY2024, and Moody's rated its debt Caa1 in March 2026. Houston had negative net assets in FY2024. Your job security depends on the institution's balance sheet, not just your contract.
Executive compensation is public information. A nonprofit orchestra's IRS Form 990 lists its best-paid officers and staff by name, with their pay. You can look up an orchestra at ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. When management tells you there's no money for raises, check the 990 first.
And when you're deciding where to audition, don't stop at the base salary. Check what tax and rent would take in that city, and the orchestra's own finances.
Corrections, 25 September 2026
What an earlier version of this article got wrong, and what it says now.
- Base salaries. Of the seven orchestras whose 2025-26 base Cadenza could check, the earlier version gave four too low, Boston's by far the most, two too high and one right. Every base salary has now been checked for the 2025-26 season.
- Boston Symphony Orchestra. It gave a base of $155K. The BSO's published base weekly salary of $3,915 from 25 August 2025 comes to $203,580 over 52 weeks for the 2025-26 season.
- New York Philharmonic. It gave $195K. The orchestra publishes $190,698 for 2025-26.
- Orchestras no longer ranked. Atlanta, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, Los Angeles, the Met Opera, Minnesota and San Francisco have been taken out of the salary ranking, and the pay ratios have been recomputed.
- Take-home comparison. It ranked orchestras by “real take-home” after tax and rent, on tax rates and rents it did not source. Its headline finding, that a Cleveland Orchestra musician keeps more than a San Francisco Symphony musician, rested on unsourced salaries. The comparison and that finding have been removed.
- Pay cards. They now all use the compensation column of each organization's FY2024 filing and are no longer headed as rankings. The earlier version listed Riccardo Muti third among the highest-paid music directors, though the Houston Symphony paid Juraj Valčuha more that year, and left out the Kennedy Center's Deborah Rutter, who was paid more than the third executive shown.
- Concertmasters. It printed two concertmasters' pay with other compensation added.
- Met Opera musicians' pay. It said, as a general fact, that Met Opera musicians earn less than in 2011. The source is one musician's remark about one veteran player, now quoted and attributed.
- Met Opera net assets. It gave them as down from more than $300M, a level not shown in any year, FY2011 to FY2025, of the figures ProPublica takes from the Met's filings. The highest is $240.4M, in FY2021.
- Gail Samuel. It showed $1,706,083 as the FY2024 executive pay of the Boston Symphony's former president and chief executive, set against a musician's base. The BSO's filing says the figure is her compensation for calendar year 2023 and includes severance of $1,550,000 and a $99,953 payout of accrued vacation. That card has been removed.
- Deborah Borda. It showed the New York Philharmonic's $1,728,420 for her, also calendar-2023 pay, under the title of executive advisor, though the orchestra's FY2023 filing lists her as president and chief executive until July 2023. That card has been removed.
- Kennedy Center and Woodruff Arts Center. The finance charts gave the whole Kennedy Center's and the whole Woodruff Arts Center's figures as the National Symphony's and the Atlanta Symphony's. Those rows are now labelled with the organization that filed.
- Strikes, lockouts and closure. Details of strikes, lockouts and the Met's pandemic closure that Cadenza could not source have been removed.
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