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One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom

Before the drastic disruption caused by the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, 85% of the United Kingdom’s 14,000 orchestral musicians were self-employed freelance workers, engaged in busy and varied portfolio careers comprising a combination of orchestral, West End theatre, chamber music, a...

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Autores principales: Cohen, Susanna, Ginsborg, Jane
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9196900/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712210
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.885606
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author Cohen, Susanna
Ginsborg, Jane
author_facet Cohen, Susanna
Ginsborg, Jane
author_sort Cohen, Susanna
collection PubMed
description Before the drastic disruption caused by the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, 85% of the United Kingdom’s 14,000 orchestral musicians were self-employed freelance workers, engaged in busy and varied portfolio careers comprising a combination of orchestral, West End theatre, chamber music, and commercial recording work. Between May and June 2020 we carried out a first study examining the impact of the pandemic on the lives of 24 self-employed orchestral musicians, all established freelancers. Twelve were mid-career and 12 were late-career (described in that study as “seasoned”). They all reported having lost their much-loved performing careers, missing music making and colleagues, and being anxious about the future of the music profession. However, there were some differences between the two groups: the late-career participants demonstrated greater financial and emotional resilience, while the mid-career musicians reported distress, confusion, and anxiety about their identity as musicians. In the present follow-up study, we aimed to examine the impact of the first year of the pandemic on the lives of 21 of the same musicians. We found that while all the mid-career participants remained committed to their performing careers, many late-career participants aged 54–59 had developed interests in non-performing music work, and the older late-career participants, aged 65 and over, feared that they might already, de facto, have retired. We discuss the findings with reference to the precarity of freelance orchestral musicians’ lives, lifespan models of musicians’ careers, self-determination theory and post-traumatic growth, and their implications for music colleges and musicians’ support organizations.
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spelling pubmed-91969002022-06-15 One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom Cohen, Susanna Ginsborg, Jane Front Psychol Psychology Before the drastic disruption caused by the sudden emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic, 85% of the United Kingdom’s 14,000 orchestral musicians were self-employed freelance workers, engaged in busy and varied portfolio careers comprising a combination of orchestral, West End theatre, chamber music, and commercial recording work. Between May and June 2020 we carried out a first study examining the impact of the pandemic on the lives of 24 self-employed orchestral musicians, all established freelancers. Twelve were mid-career and 12 were late-career (described in that study as “seasoned”). They all reported having lost their much-loved performing careers, missing music making and colleagues, and being anxious about the future of the music profession. However, there were some differences between the two groups: the late-career participants demonstrated greater financial and emotional resilience, while the mid-career musicians reported distress, confusion, and anxiety about their identity as musicians. In the present follow-up study, we aimed to examine the impact of the first year of the pandemic on the lives of 21 of the same musicians. We found that while all the mid-career participants remained committed to their performing careers, many late-career participants aged 54–59 had developed interests in non-performing music work, and the older late-career participants, aged 65 and over, feared that they might already, de facto, have retired. We discuss the findings with reference to the precarity of freelance orchestral musicians’ lives, lifespan models of musicians’ careers, self-determination theory and post-traumatic growth, and their implications for music colleges and musicians’ support organizations. Frontiers Media S.A. 2022-05-30 /pmc/articles/PMC9196900/ /pubmed/35712210 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.885606 Text en Copyright © 2022 Cohen and Ginsborg. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Psychology
Cohen, Susanna
Ginsborg, Jane
One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title_full One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title_fullStr One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title_full_unstemmed One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title_short One Year on: The Impact of COVID-19 on the Lives of Freelance Orchestral Musicians in the United Kingdom
title_sort one year on: the impact of covid-19 on the lives of freelance orchestral musicians in the united kingdom
topic Psychology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9196900/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/35712210
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.885606
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