Sigh... it begins. One of the most stressful things about running your own ensemble and also being a freelancer is this nightmare of trying steer between the large ensembles which give my large and highly paid work... and trying to fit availabilities of venues and musicians/guests.

Of course, this would be much easier if I could just let go of work that is being offered in other states, but as any freelancer knows... say "no" too many times, and you do definitely run the risk of never being asked again! So, it is a juggling act to wait for the contract offers and the draft scheduling from the large and well-funded groups... and then scramble for the availability of left over weekends and other dates with the other small fry!

... and hanging over your head is the requirement to fit 4 concerts in the year... 52 to choose from, but then rule out summer and some large public holidays like Easter, and you are then down to roughly 40... and then after receiving the potential dates from the big guys... you are down to about 8-15 with various potential holds/penciled in dates from other groups.

Currently, it looks like that we have a possible range of 12 weekend dates that would fit in with my wife and I... and seeing as we ARE the group, we should have ourselves! And that is quite promising. I've already emailed the venue to see if all of those dates are free... and then we will get around to checking the availability for the invited guests to see if any of those work.

Of course, of those 12 dates... not all of them are good combinations, as we also need to spread the concerts out throughout the year and not have all four in the same month or two!

At some point, I will have to make hard decisions to block out potential work... but we aren't there yet!

Hopefully, a long way in the future, we can just ignore the larger groups in the other cities and just lay down our dates... but to do that, we need to be paying a more attractive amount to guests. Our problem is that we have a high rate of pay, but a low amount of total hours... so, one weekend at a decent pay rate... but that is trumped by a longer period at a lower rate, because the total amount of pay is higher.

... and we still don't pay ourselves as we are still in a start-up mode and saving everything back to the ensemble. Possibly from this coming year, we might start taking a half pay rate... as that will offset the work that we will have to decline to do our own projects, well... it will reduce the sting of the lost work, but note quite alleviate it!

Times like this... I start to wonder why we do it... but then I think, this is our passion project and if nothing else, we have garnered quite a lot of support locally and interest from further afield... it is possible that we have might started something interesting in the longer term, and that makes it all worthwhile.

... but until then, it is worry and stress about whether or not we are making good choices in our planning that won't handicap ourselves financially... both personally and as an ensemble!

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