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Last fall, after an Estonian National Symphony Orchestra (ERSO) concert, conductor Olari Elts turned to address the audience: "We can no longer manage despite the fact that, in the Baltic and northern European context, we have many new and very good supporters." Shortly following his appeal from the stage, two ERSO musicians appeared on Estonian morning television to extend their tin cups. Life in the orchestra was hard, they said, yet they offered no solution, no proposal for how things might be different. And all this time ERSO continued to manage. There was no visible disruption in their concert schedule. "Musicians often complain," a composer once said to me in the spirit of dogs barking at the caravan, "and then they shut up and do their jobs."

A freelance artist friend of mine, who also saw the ERSO players appear on television, found no compassion for them. "They should be grateful that they have the opportunity to play." His lack of solidarity surprised me. After all, like most who earn their livings in the arts, he also struggles to make a buck. For me, their appeal sparked little sympathy, though for very different reasons. As a boss in New York City once told me: "If you come to me with a problem, you better also bring a solution." So where was their solution?

Basic human dignity

I have immense respect for Olari Elts as a leader, because it is not every conductor who will so publicly stand up for the well-being of his orchestra. It is to be commended in every way.

If we widen our lens to examine orchestra life in general, it does not appear to me that it is something to be envied. Rather like the Cenobitic Desert Monks, orchestra life is a calling, perhaps sometimes even a life of hardship and suffering. The reward? Leonard Bernstein believed music was a way of experiencing the present moment so fully that it is "almost like experiencing God." And he was talking about the listener. I can only imagine how it must feel to be an active participant in playing the music which is considered by some to be mankind's greatest achievement.

I work at a greater distance from God. I am a freelance fiction and essay writer who has worked as a librettist for several composers. This "innocent bystander" position has allowed me to cultivate friendships and acquaintances with professional musicians, many of them Estonian. Interestingly, being near their world but not of it has given me a fly-on-the-wall position where my presence is quickly forgotten. The writer Joan Didion once described herself as being "so physically small, so temperamentally unobtrusive, and so neurotically inarticulate that people tend to forget that my presence runs counter to their best interests. And it always does." In other words, people talk around me. Frequently about things they shouldn't.

To protect the jobs of orchestra members who did not know the quiet man next to them was a writer, I will not describe these instances in detail, but this list should give the reader a taste of the orchestra work environment. If you doubt me, Dear Reader, just (privately) ask an orchestra member.

1. A portion of orchestra players have been employed for years using temporary contracts which mean the player does not receive a cent in vacation pay. This practice was, apparently, once widespread and abused, but has in recent years, as I am told, begun to be used less.
2. In one orchestra, the management failed to extend the living and work permit of a foreign player despite him having a valid contract. Despite assurances that management was dealing with it, the player was forced to leave the country, orchestra members taking up a collection to pay for his plane ticket home.
3. If a musicians' representative stands up for the group's rights, he risks losing his job. The situation is frequently, "heads down and keep working" or "if you don't like it, then quit." One orchestra, I'm told, has gone so far as to formally forbid any of its members from speaking to the media without advance permission.
4. Members in some orchestras are routinely told that lots of foreigners would like to have their jobs, and therefore they should remain silent about any problems.
5. An orchestra member is admonished in writing for coming to the defense of a colleague who was treated unjustly. (Two warnings, and you're fired.)
6. One orchestra director abruptly, and without the orchestra's consent, ordered the orchestra to play at a birthday party. The orchestra was not compensated for this two-day, summer weekend commitment (rehearsals plus concert). Later the director informed them that it was to be considered charity work.
7. Rehearsals exceed the contractual term of a service. (A problem since it both reduces their hourly rate and makes them late for their other jobs.)
8. Orchestra management is fed, while orchestra members are not.
9. Orchestra members are ordered to wear specific colors and outfits on stage, yet not reimbursed for them.
10. Musicians in some orchestras are provided with difficult-to-read, "crowded" sheet music which is downloaded for free from the internet in order to save money.
11. Performance schedules are issued as few as 14 days in advance.
12. Most musicians (with some exceptions) must purchase their own instruments, bows, and stage clothing. Some instruments will easily cost as much as the musicians' automobiles, and they are sometimes financed by "construction loans" from retail banks, since the system of instrument patronage and dealer-based financing is only nascent in our region. (At orchestra salary levels, this is the equivalent of a grocery store cashier having to prove they have tens of thousands in assets before they can qualify for the near-minimum wage job.)

Is the irony here lost on anyone? These are the people who make music of such importance and magnitude that it has been launched into space to represent Earth to aliens, yet they are treated like galley slaves. Or, as a Stoic who believes those in unjust situations still have agency might point out: It's not the orchestra's fault that their bosses treat them poorly, but their tolerating it certainly is.

Forget for the moment that the above list is connected with orchestras. While the reader may find some of the above to be petty grievances, they are all symptoms two things: (1) Callously unprofessional management, and (2) labor's inability to negotiate. In a competitive labor market, no one would be willing to sacrifice basic human dignity in order to work for an organization which, frankly, treats them like shit.

The reader may also note that many of the listed items have little connection to money. Many could be easily remedied, restoring a little bit of dignity to orchestra life.

The Taliban solution

As far as I can determine, few disagree with the substance of Olari Elts' remarks. And they have not gone unheard. Parliamentarian Kadri Tali, speaking before parliament in October 21, 2025, noted, "the redistribution of the budget is not sufficient. We must find private money, a new way of financially empowering cultural organizations and the state working together. The answer is: We want to create a good mechanism, a model for the financing of culture and sport. For this the only possibility is the state and private sector working together to support culture and sport."

Whether you agree or disagree with the ethics and mechanics of Tali's Bill no. 728 SE, which was taken into law in December 2025, Tali is to be commended for offering a solution.

This law will, as I understand it, lower the gambling tax to theoretically attract more online casinos to Estonia, thus resulting in increased funding for the arts. As of this writing, this amendment to the gambling legislation is currently stalled to due to a clerical error in the wording of the text.

Is 728 SE the silver bullet? Even if Tali's proposal does work, the skeptic in me finds it difficult to imagine a scenario where orchestra players would be given a meaningful salary boost. Because when was the last time Estonian cultural workers received a dramatic increase in salary? If more money arrived in state coffers, is there truly reason to believe it would trickle down to an ERSO cellist? We can only wait and see.

My point is this: One might conclude that low pay and poor working conditions are not a glitch in the system, but are rather a feature for cultural workers in a post-Corona, post-Soviet society. Estonia's cultural funding model might be paraphrased as: Everybody gets a little. Nobody gets enough.

Brood reduction

Playing Armchair Minister of Culture for a moment, how might we rectify the situation? Stepping outside of orchestras for a moment, let's take magazine publishing, a sphere where I have worked in both the U.S. and Estonia. There are 15 magazines which belong to the state foundation SA Kultuurileht. Are all 15 holy cows? Does society really need all 15? Do "Vikerkaar" and "Looming" not compete with each other? Or "Sirp" and "Müürileht"? Could "Muusika" and "Teater.Muusika.Kino" not be merged? Does Estonia not have enough writers who can permit themselves to be paid €50 for an article? Or photographers who are paid between €5 and €15 for a picture? What if we were to eliminate half of them and pay living wages to the employees of the remaining half?

And what if we were to apply that same draconian logic to other cultural foundations?

According to data that I can find, in 2021 there were 174 museums in Estonia. How many of these museums are not just a dusty room, a babushka in front of a coat closet, and foamcore posters on the wall? There are 94 performing-arts institutions in Estonia, 28 of which receive funding from the Ministry of Culture. Are all these sacred?

And what about Cultural Endowment of Estonia money? Could we not eliminate all the tiny €200, feel-good-but-totally-inconsequential sums distributed to artists? These perhaps serve to keep some artists quiet, while the real money flows to others, yet, to most, the Cultural Endowment's contribution is about as meaningful as the state's €60 annual dentistry allowance.

Estonia has five professional symphony orchestras — ERSO, the Estonian National Opera Orchestra, Vanemuine Orchestra, Tallinn Chamber Orchestra, and the Pärnu City Orchestra — all of which are financed by a combination of state and local government support. Since each orchestra receives funding from a variety of sources, one would have to be a better accountant than I to determine their actual budgets. Just a quick look at Appendix 1. Ministry of Culture 2024 Budget by Program and Institution will make your head spin. But from available public records and newspaper articles, I would hazard a guess that their combined budgets reach €30 million. Add to that the festival budgets, a €1.5 million cultural diplomacy budget, and special orchestra budgets like Paavo Järvi's Festival Orchestra, which has a budget of €400,000, plus two professional concert or wind orchestras (Tallinn Police Orchestra, Estonian Military Orchestra), the Narva City Orchestra, and there is an impressive amount of money involved. Enough, certainly, to buy proper sheet music.

I cannot imagine a state without an orchestra, at least one like Estonia, which has been put on the world map thanks to its music and musicianship. Could ERSO ever be eliminated? I would hope not, but having a national airline was once also considered critical. It is worth noting that the demise of orchestras is routine elsewhere. In 2011, the Dutch government reduced its cultural budget by €200 million, which resulted in the disappearance or drastic restructuring of four professional orchestras. Since 2010, at least three orchestras in the United States have filed for bankruptcy.

In nature, eagles, storks, and herons engage in brood reduction. Sand tiger sharks practice intrauterine cannibalism. Mice, hamsters and rabbits abandon some of their newborns after birth. In nature, none of this is seen as cruelty — it is known as resource allocation. And, in our society, it is some of the ugly work that politicians are paid to do.

Entrepreneurship?

Perhaps such draconian measures are unnecessary. If we all conclude, which I think we do, that the post-Corona, post-Soviet model of funding orchestras is no longer sustainable, might we find innovative new ways to fund them? Might we encourage management to think in this direction?

According to Arne Herman's 2023 book, "Orchestra Management: Models and Repertoires for the Symphony Orchestra," "there is not a single orchestra in the world that earns enough from performances to cover its own expenses." They, instead, rely on a complex mix of state and municipality support, grants, philanthropy, and commercial income. In his book, Herman identifies 13 funding sources used by orchestras around the world. How many of these are employed in Estonia?

Throughout history, orchestras have struggled to survive. But, as Herman says, "Rather than pessimistically stating that the orchestra is in a continuous state of crisis, one might just as well claim, optimistically, that the orchestra (and classical music, for that matter) is in a continuous state of survival, shifting between crisis and innovation."

So instead of killing off half the brood, perhaps we might encourage innovation and entrepreneurship, as has happened with the orchestras profiled in Herman's book. I am not a professional manager of orchestras, but I cannot help but wonder if Estonia is not such an outlier that its model cannot be improved by taking a page from the financial and programming models used by the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra, the Casco Phil, the Royal Concergebouworkest, London Symphony Orchestra, and the Aurora Orchestra.

And if the appetite exists for even more radical change, we may visit the American models, where only about five percent of orchestras rely on government funding. Yet somehow they make it work: In 2014 there were 1,224 symphony orchestras, 117 of them with annual budgets over $2.5 million, each of them required to raise money through private means. Of course Estonia is not America, and it does not have the kind of private money that builds concert houses and universities. But ideas and models are everywhere, some of them more relevant to Eastern Europe than others. Perhaps Estonia does not need to reinvent the wheel? It might merely need to choose from a host of ideas already in place elsewhere. And, given Estonia's track record as the world's most prolific and innovative unicorn factory, could not the great minds here be put to work to develop an additional 13 funding models to be included in Herman's next book?

Don't hold it against them

In the late 1980s in the United States, I was part of a team responsible for spending a marketing budget of $60 million for a well-known brand of vodka. While some of the money went for traditional advertising, huge swaths of it were doled out to artists of every stripe: composers, painters, musicians, fashion designers, you name it. We even commissioned a symphony. That experience taught me that artists, while they have their positive qualities, are also a royal pain in the ass. The less talented they are, the worse they are to deal with, calling you up at every hour to tell you how deserving of money they are.

But orchestra members really are a rare breed. They are musicians who devote their entire lives to be able to interpret and perform a repertoire of works considered to be the apex of human achievement, yet they also agree to be a part of a system that continually oscillates between crisis and survival. For these reasons we should not hold it against them if they are poor businessmen. (But they might consider hiring an agent.)

And global financial development is not on their side at the moment. The existence of the symphony orchestra may be as much an economic miracle as much as it is a musical miracle. The success of symphony orchestras in many markets have come on the back of the rise of the middle class. Now the middle class is in decline, and competitive forms of entertainment are on the rise. "National Museum of The Middle Class Opens In Schaumberg, Illinois," read a recent headline in the satirical newspaper The Onion.

But it would seem the first task is to draw a clear line: a written contract that is in clear black and white: This is how much we'll pay you, and this is what you're expected to do for the money. We will stand by our end, and you will stand by yours. End the indignity. That would cost the taxpayer next to nothing, and everyone would be happier

This article first appeared in the magazine, Edasi.

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