expensive musicians

I had an organization looking for a string ensemble in Burlington Vermont ask me to submit a bid for providing a small group for their special event. This would have meant traveling for many hours to play for a very short engagement...one hour! Of course, our expenses don't change, no matter how long or short the engagement is! We still travel from the Boston local. I wasn't particularly offended that they didn't book us, since people in Vermont only book us because they know the quality of our work is known to be very high, especially at popular wedding venues like Castle Hill in Cavendish But I thought they might be interested to know why our bid was much higher than groups, so I sent her this email message. In the interest of 'full disclosure' I am pasting the text into my blog today... Here was the gist of her message to me..."...I was unaware you were under the impression _____(name of the organization) would be using your services for the anniversary Gala. For the one hour time slot requested, and seeing as this is a charity fundraiser event with limits on expenses, your bid of $1,527 was out of our price range. Thank you for the follow up and I'm sorry for the miscommunication..." Here's what I responded with. "...Nope. Just noticed you hadn't changed the status of your request for bids on the Gigmaster website, so didn't know if you had someone yet or not. Regarding the price range, when you ask for bids from people who are out of your local area, the price always goes up higher than if you book local musicians. If you like the quality of a group that comes from farther away, because of any particular special qualities or, as in our case, a more varied repertoire including arrangements of modern popular songs, for instance...then it might be worth paying a little extra. Another case would be the comparison between the quality of groups of musicians. Sometimes people who perform for lower rates are also less polished in their performances...less professional. That's not necessarily always the case, though. There are many musicians looking for engagements to fill their datebooks that are willing to perform for lower fees. You wouldn't, however, expect a musician from a big five orchestra (Boston, New York, Chicago, LA, Philadelphia) to perform for lower rates. so, anyway, the fee reflects a travel expense from the Boston area, and also takes into account the fact that our smallest booking time is 1.5 hours. Hope you find this info interesting and informative... a little peek into the world of the professional musicians' contracting issues..."