Auditions

Ill be honest, My experiences auditioning haven't exactly been the high points of my career. Which is bizarre, because I totally get off learning the excerpts, the pieces they come from, the schools of though etc, Its my bread and butter, I love it. But when it comes time to lay it out for a panel, nerves take over, and any chops i have worked up mostly go out the window. Its ususaly the first piece that ends up the worst, Especially a Marimba solo, things are also exceptionally worse if its Bach.. usually after a awful solo things start to come back into play and I can actually thing about things other than how much the panel hate me, or what is the name of that Ten Years After song that was on the radio on the drive in. Weird, but thats where my mind flies when I play for these things


I haven't played an audition in about a year, Prior to that I did four over the course of a month. The first two auditions I played ok, but made some really dumb mistakes, just general nerves, but on the whole there was some good stuff in there. The second I bombed, like as bad an audition as you could play, I mean, its just as well I walked into the thing and after hit the first note my pants fell down.. It was the worst audition you could have. In the last audition I was happy with my playing but nothing came of it, I played well, no brutal gaffs, but maybe they were looking for something else. I will probably write about each of these in separate blogs, especially the pant falling down one. Its a good story..

Needless to say, this experience was a total blow to my confidence and made me seriously doubt my ability to play or audition at all. In reflecting on my preparation for the auditions I found some serious holes in my practice session which I have since fixed (hopefully). Even in practicing now, which is 90% orchestral related I really haven't had the courage to seriously consider auditioning for something.

Last night I came across a pretty good opportunity to throw my hat in the ring. There is an audition about three weeks away, I can make it to the venue to do it in person, and the list is very open ended. You choose the solo and the excerpts etc and it only costs 30 dollars to take. No big financial loss there.

When i came across it last night i had this bizarre feeling of dread come over me. I actually hated the thought of doing another audition, how sad is that. I then quickly realized that if i want to give this a go i need to get over those bad auditions and get as many more out of the way. I need to start thinking about how i feel taking them and my preparation in the weeks leading up to them. I mean, I've heard it took Alan Abel 30 auditions to land his first job, so i can take some comfort in that (whether thats true or not) Regardless, this blog may work as a preparation journal for this sort of thing as well. I hope thats ok.


Lately I have been listing to a lot of Stravinsky, Boulez with Cleveland, Rite of Spring (from 1969 or 70 i think..) and a recording of Les Noces I picked up this summer with Daniel Reuss conducting musikFabrik and the RIAS chamber choir. It sounds great,


The soprano on the recording is Carolyn Sampson and she dosent make me want to stab my eyes like who ever is singing on the Bernstein recording (the only other version of this that I have)


and if you want to see the piece with its original choreography here is the Royal Ballet... Enjoy!!