The Musicians You Never See

Pop quiz: what member of a symphony orchestra typically knows the most about every piece of music on every program, and knows it before most of the orchestra is even aware of what they’ll be playing? Answer: the librarian. “Each year the symphony music librarians prepare approximately 80 different programs for the orchestra to perform — about 600 compositions totaling 35,000 parts for as many as 250 artists in a given performance. Those parts are rarely only a single page and often run to dozens of pages — all of which must be checked… The sheer volume of work in the library can be daunting.”