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This is a great article on what it's like to be an auditioning classical musician these days. The competition is unbelievably fierce and the amount of dedication it takes is almost unsurpassed in any other field.

http://www.bostonmagazine.com/articles/ ... -audition/" target="_blank

I came here to post this article. Everyone should read it.

"Give me success or take this desire away from me. One of the two."

Thirty years ago I was being pushed to major in performance and try to go this route. This article reminds me how glad I am that taking that advice was not one of the many insanely dumb things I did at that age. Not saying it's dumb for everyone. But it would have been for me, and I suspect it is for a whole lot more people than have realized it.

Tony Halloin wrote: ... the amount of dedication it takes is almost unsurpassed in any other field.

I wonder if it would be rude to question this.

An alternate view is that music provides opportunities for those who are NOT making it to keep "the dream" alive and continue to beat themselves up - all in the hope that eventually their big break will come...they don't screw up the audition (this time)...they get the job...etc.

The sheer number of people allowed to show up for a "job interview" is rivaled, perhaps, only by theater. What this tells me is that either the people doing the hiring have no idea what they are looking for, or it really is the case that any ALL of the pool of 200 auditioners are capable of doing the job and the result is simply a lottery. Perhaps it used to be a lottery of "knowing the right people"; now it's the lottery of "one perfect performance".

The amount of dedication shown, and the sheer amount of work done, is commonly IMMENSE - but I wonder if it's not *more* immense for those who will never make it, those who aren't quite good enough but are allowed by the system to keep trying.

The quote from the article - roughly "we hope there's someone so brilliant that there's no question" - is very revealing. If someone is *that* good, why aren't they already well known to those doing the hiring? Why doesn't Boston simply use a system of "scouts" - travelling the world listening to lesser orchestras and allowing musicians to "audition" by simply doing the job?

For that matter...why, oh why, does an orchestra like Boston have AUDITIONS anyway? Some misguided notion that a job at Boston is a prize awarded for a single Olympic-Trials-like performance? In other fields, top organizations find the people they want and recruit them. They don't hold cattle-call auditions and pretend that any one of 200 applications *might* be acceptable to them.

Yes, there are "rising shooting star" hires - youngsters still in college getting prime time gigs. But, if you've been out of school for 5 years and haven't won a job that gives you a platform to perform (and be noticed by a "scout") - it's really delusional to practice in your basement hoping that the next audition will be "the one". You are NOT going to succeed in Boston, and you are simply wasting time (yours and everyone else's) by trying. That "pressure" is all self-imposed. Perhaps the system acts to enable these delusions, but I don't think the system creates the pressure.

sloan wrote:
In other fields, top organizations find the people they want and recruit them.

That's the way it used to be in the music business. A conductor might simply choose someone that he (not SHE in those days, but that's a different matter...or is it?) heard play at a different venue, or a retiring player or section leader might simply have the latest local protégé assume the seat. (Hypothetical[?] example: Someone with the name of Toscanini or Ormandy says "I want that one," and that's the way is was [sorry Walter Kronkite fans]).

In these days of concern for fairness, equality for gender, race, etc., no one person can instantaneously be anointed as the new _____________ of ________ Symphony Orchestra. Thus, we now have the blind cattle-call auditions that are kept somewhat "under control" by limiting the invited candidates to those who demonstrate sufficient experience on their résumé. Some may consider even THAT unfair, denying a phenom a chance to be heard (this discussion appeared on TubeNet some weeks ago, citing Carol Jantsch as an example of one whose application was initially denied).

The parallel was drawn with job openings in major corporations. Could you imagine someone applying for a CEO position with little or no administrative experience with recognized companies (with the possible exception of nepotism...)?

For good or bad (it has been for GOOD intentions), major American orchestras have gone from one extreme to the other in their musician hiring and auditioning process.

And even if you happen to be the outstanding player, make the absolutely best and win the audition behind a screen, the old type of maestro and the old type of orchestral culture could be a very, very complicated situation. Maybe most of you know the following but for those that are not aware of how things can go totally wrong here is a link to the horrible and very sad story of what happened to a great trombone player that got her job in the Munich Philharmonic. http://www.osborne-conant.org/ladies.htm

Cattle call? Haven't seen one of those since Chicago. Maybe I missed one...but, even smaller scale orchestras are doing the paper and recording thing most of the time.

Yes...some parts of that may be embellished, but not that much.
I haven't done an audition in a long time, but things have only escalated in terms of competition.

There is a huge difference between community bands and a major orchestra. One lesser player in Boston could cost them millions in donations. The days of choosing a buddy or student to replace you of a section member are, fortunately, gone.

294 resumes sent...74 advanced to "tape round"...35 advanced to live "preliminaries."

If that's a cattle call, I'm Mickey Mouse.

Todd S. "who wonders how many of the 220 denied resumes included a recent DMA in percussion performance" Malicoate

Sorry in advance for the long post.

My main worry about this article is that people will read it and this person’s story will then become their own story. If you've yet to take a major audition, what will be going through your head now? You are now going to bring the memories of this article up in your own mind the next time you step into the audition room - and that will definitely not help you. The article tells you to worry, to be afraid of the audition process. Yes, it is a very taxing experience and the months of preparation can destroy a family (or you) if it is not handled well. But is this one moment in time your whole life? We're musicians. We're mostly scar tissue. We spend our lives voluntarily walking into situations where we KNOW we may have the snot beat out of us.

Stage fright is a phobic response – one trial learning. It only takes one negative experience to have it imprint on your brain forever and it is a very hard cycle to break. As musicians, we are at a disadvantage. The painter doesn’t have to let anyone see his latest masterpiece until he is completely satisfied with it. We deal in a “time art”. What we do happens for a moment in time and then it’s gone. You cannot change it after the fact. I teach my students not to worry about things they cannot change, so let go of it.

I have posted the experience of the “performance death spiral” before but here it is again so that I can offer some insights on it.
It’s your Master’s recital. You walk on stage. You’re nervous/excited and in many cases the “fight or flight” syndrome is running at a blazing pace in your system. Your visceral muscles tighten up which will inhibit your breathing; your pupils constrict, sharpening your visual focus; ALL of your senses are heightened dramatically due to the adrenaline shot you just got by setting foot on the stage. With that adrenaline comes a touch of nausea and perhaps a bit of a case of “dry mouth”, and now you are worried about how your body feels. You are focused on anything but the music.

You nod to your pianist to start the first piece and as you take your first breath, you only get about half of what you need because of the tension in your abdomen. So with too little air, you begin to play and it sounds SO LOUD, because your hearing is extremely heightened by the “fight or flight” syndrome response and you then pull back the dynamics to a level that “sounds” right, but probably doesn’t feel right. You have now changed all the “rules” and you have never played this piece in this manner in the practice room.

Then it happens. You clip a note (because you’re trying to conserve air, holding back, playing at the wrong dynamic in a manner that you’ve never practiced before). In your brain, time stands still and you focus on that one note. And your “internal dyad” (the voice in our head that talks to a place in our head that listens) starts yammering about what happened and “what do I do to fix it” and you are not really paying attention to what you are doing at the moment, but dwelling on something that happened in the past- your concentration is not where it needs to be and then – BLAMMO. Another clipped note and your mind stops at another moment in time and focuses on that miss. You are now in real jeopardy, “circling the drain”. Your mind is racing a mile a minute. The little voice in the back of your head is now screaming at you – but usually about things that have nothing to do with reality – it’s giving you an “I told you so” speech and telling you that “you don’t belong out there”. “You should give up and walk away and stop wasting people’s time”. And so it goes.

A contributing factor in this musician’s story is that of “value”. Winning this job would have been the most important step in his life from his viewpoint, and this expectation of his added a great deal of pressure to win. There was nothing else that mattered as much to him except winning. By not winning, he has now damaged his “self-worth” and his ego has been pretty well shredded. He was practicing up to 20 hours a day and could have had the same result on 3 hours a day. Could he have won the job on 3 hours of practicing a day? We may never know. But I do know a very successful professional player who only worked on audition material 3 hours a day along with his other playing responsibilities.

For the audition, preparation is not everything. It is a major portion, but preparation without developing focus and concentration is not “being prepared”. I believe I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that you will almost never miss the high G# in Bydlo – you’ll miss the D# after it because you are too busy patting yourself on the back for the G#. It’s the easy stuff that’ll kill you – when you let down your concentration for just a second. One of the Bach cello suite movements has a terrifically wicked section on the next to the last line with lots of odd valve combinations. I can’t tell you how many times I have nailed that line only to step all over the simple arpeggios in the last line. I have worked hard to train myself to get more intense and more focused the further I get into a piece of music and to definitely increase my concentration after the hard stuff. I work to play with concentration and focus until the silence after the double bar. Athletes call it “getting into the zone”.

Oh, and learn to turn off that stupid voice in the back of your head. He's an idiot.

A prime example of being in the zone was in the description from Pete Link after he won the Sendai Philharmonic Principal Tuba spot. I asked him what it was like and he told me how it went.

Auditions in Japan are quite different from here in the states. He walked out onto the stage and, instead of a screened panel the ENTIRE ORCHESTRA is sitting in the hall. They applauded as he walked to the chair. And his brain went into recital mode – not audition mode. He bowed to the “audience” and thanked them for taking the time to hear him play. He went into the Vaughn-Williams with the great pianist they had provided which made that very comfortable. Then I asked him what excerpts he had played and he said “The first one was the Ride, and the last one was Fountains. I have NO MEMORY OF WHAT HAPPENED IN BETWEEN THOSE TWO.” That’s focus.

This article represents one person’s story. It is NOT your story. Be entertained and moved by it, but remember, it’s not you.

As usual, Roger has added useful material in one of his posts. I believe he is entirely correct. How much practice time is enough? I'm not certain there is an exact answer, but it seems to me that beyond a certain amount of time, it would tend to play with one's mind. A great deal of practice, at least for me, says to my brain, "This is unbelievably important!" That only adds pressure during the actual performance. The more normal I can convince myself that a situation is, the more likely I am to perform well. His message seems to say that we can only do what we can do, so just don't overemphasize things. Or, if I take some liberties, it is: Don't worry. Be happy.

My wife studied karate with her kids and her ex-, at a school which teaches nothing but the physical punches, kicks, parries, etc. None of the David Carradine Kung Fu mental discipline. My stepson did his black belt test, and almost passed out from fatigue. He had no focus, just repetition of moves. And, if not that his dad was one if the testers, he may not have passed.
It takes a lot more than physical preparation to be in this business at any level. Sadly, most kolij teecherz don't stress that aspect enough, if at all. 'The Inner Game' is nothing new, just a cool packaging. But it will help avoid the pitfalls Roger speaks of.

It comes down to:

Do Your Best - for that moment in time;

Don't Care Too Much;

It's Just Another Honk.

Roger

Roger Lewis wrote: The article tells you to worry, to be afraid of the audition process.

Great post, Roger!

One of my enduring takeaways from lessons with Warren was to cultivate an eagerness to show the committee what you had in store. "Wait'll they hear . . . ". That changed everything.

TubaRay wrote: A great deal of practice, at least for me, says to my brain, "This is unbelievably important!" That only adds pressure during the actual performance. The more normal I can convince myself that a situation is, the more likely I am to perform well.

This is key, and ties in nicely with my earlier comments. If you treat the audition as a HUGE step up from your usual day-to-day activities, then you have already screwed up. If you look at the repertoire list and more than half of the pieces will be "first time" for you - you are already screwed.

It's *exactly* like every other exam you have ever taken: if you have to cram the night (or the week) before, then you have already failed.

I compare a major audition with the Qualifying Exam most students take to get into a PhD program. This is a "breadth" exam that contains questions on anything and everything the student has seen from their first semester in college to their second year in graduate school. Amazingly, some students prepare for this exam by setting aside the month before to review all that material. These students ALWAYS do badly. The ones who succeed start preparation at least a full year in advance, and make that preparation part of their daily routine. By the time the exam rolls around, it's nothing special. Exams are fun when you know the answers. Auditions are fun
when you are the best player in the room.

When we are talking about an audition for Boston - look at the list: if you haven't already played every piece on the list, in public performance with the full orchestra...maybe (just maybe) you should go and do that first, and come back when you are prepared.

[and, yes - I consider on-site, in person, interviews of 35 people for one position to be a "cattle call"]

sloan wrote:[and, yes - I consider on-site, in person, interviews of 35 people for one position to be a "cattle call"]

I doubt the 220 musicians whose resumes weren't even "good" enough to SUBMIT A FREAKIN' TAPE would agree.

Here's a thought: Say that they did allow everyone who wanted to audition to send a tape of 3 or 4 exerpts (say 1.5 minutes of music). Out of the 294, probably 220 would actually send a tape. That's a little over 5 hours of music to listen to. The audition committee could take a couple of weeks to listen to the 225 tapes at their leisure and submit a list of 25 candidates for the live preliminaries.

Now, does anyone think that the same 25 people would be listed by everyone in the committee? I sure don't. I don't mean to be insensitive to percussionists, but dang...how much "better" can one guy play the snare drum part in Capriccio Espagnol than another?

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:

sloan wrote:[and, yes - I consider on-site, in person, interviews of 35 people for one position to be a "cattle call"]

I doubt the 220 musicians whose resumes weren't even "good" enough to SUBMIT A FREAKIN' TAPE would agree.

I just did a job search. We got several hundred applications (including 3-5 letters of recommendation plus full vitae for each candidate). We invited FIVE people to interview. We made ONE offer. It was accepted. Those are fairly unremarkable numbers in my field.

The issue here is (I think) that "auditioning classical musician" appears to be a job description. The musicians treat the audition process as their main job. I'm suggesting that they should, instead, get ACTUAL jobs that allow them to develop as musicians and become visible to the profession.
I'm absolutely astounded that personnel directors don't feel that they can take a stack of 220 resumes and narrow the search down to 5 (or even 10). Allowing 75 to submit tapes is a waste of time. Having heard 75 tapes - are there really 35 that you need to hear "live"? If that's the case - then listening to those 75 tapes was useless.

Here's a better plan - invite all 220 to show up. Sell tickets to the auditions and run them something like the "mock auditions" at conferences. I find those events to be MOST illuminating, and I suspect that attending one or three "open auditions" might bring a dose or reality to 90% of the folk who spend their every waking hour preparing tapes and applying for jobs for which they are patently unqualified.

Allowing someone to submit a tape, or travel to an audition, simply encourages players by giving the idea that there is any chance at all that they will actually get the gig. Add in the number of players I hear talking about "taking the audition just for the experience" - and you have a colosal waste of everyone's time.

Here's a clue - if you take an audition "on a flyer", even when you know down deep that you are not qualified, WHAT WILL YOU DO IF YOU GET THE JOB? You'll hate it, you will fail, and...back to square one.

Now...I agree that jobs need to be widely advertised. Care must be taken to be sure that the music director doesn't just hire his cousin's nephew. But that doesn't mean that it's reasonable to spend a day listening to 35 players, even (ESPECIALLY) if most of them play for 30 seconds before hearing "thank you, NEXT!". If your personnel director can't plow through 500 resumes and whittle the field down to 10, you need to hold auditions for a new personnel director!

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:[...but dang...how much "better" can one guy play the snare drum part in Capriccio Espagnol than another?...

Make that Bolero by Ravel and I can assure you that even amongst the best there are differences.

Lingon wrote:

Todd S. Malicoate wrote:[...but dang...how much "better" can one guy play the snare drum part in Capriccio Espagnol than another?...

Make that Bolero by Ravel and I can assure you that even amongst the best there are differences.

I wouldn't doubt that there are differences. Of course there are. The question is, which one is the "best"?

Answer that question and you'll see my problem with the audition process.

sloan wrote:If your personnel director can't plow through 500 resumes and whittle the field down to 10, you need to hold auditions for a new personnel director!

Sorry, I really don't think they can based on words on a piece of paper. Just my 2 cents.

The pain I felt when reading this article was NOT about the candidate who practiced 20 hours a day and failed, but about the guy who HAD the job and then was refused tenure. We were not told enough details to determine, exactly, why he was denied, but it is HIS future happiness/sanity I'd worry about...

Karl "probably worries too much about things that don't even concern him" H.

bloke wrote:(Admittedly having not read the article...)

BZZZZT! Thank you for playing.