sight-reading...for music director applicants

[iiipopes]

Instrumentalists' audition repertoire lists often include "possible sight-reading".

I believe it would be great - when auditioning potential music directors - to include the SAME for them.

I suspect that many young aspiring music directors have little experience (as with many instrumentalist applicants), and that many of them - when they've conducted orchestras - have conducted pieces that THEY KNOW very well, which may (??) be a fairly short list...

...so how about (at a rehearsal) throwing a thoughtfully-chosen "secret" piece at them (as well as keeping it a secret to the orchestra, to avoid someone tipping off the applicant ahead of time), to see how a potential music director "sight-reads" a piece. It doesn't have to be that obscure...perhaps a symphony by a well-known composer, yet less-performed (etc.) Something with meter changes, and well-known ENOUGH that there are still traditional performance practices (ie. "play it like the record") involved...

We essentially did that in high school in preparation for the sight reading portion of the state band contest. The director has two minutes to review the short piece himself, then two minutes to explain it to the band, using technical terms, no vocalizing parts or rhythms, just technical direction. Then it is performed for the judges. We always got a "I" rating on our sight reading skills, which, of course, is an extrapolation of the ability of our band conductor's sight reading of scores skills.

[michael_glenn]

One of my friends is now a conductor for one of the DC Air Force bands. He told me he had to “sight read” and conduct a piece during his audition. I don’t think this is an outrageous thing to have in the application/audition process for conductors. I think it shows how much more there is to conducting, rather than just keeping time.

[ken k]

I had to do this when I auditioned for the air force band as a conductor. the piece I was given was Ives Circus March....needless to say it did not go well.....

kk

[Mark]

Would some one give a real-world example of how a conductor might be in a position where "sight-conducting" would actually occur? Don't say the regular conductor gets suddenly ill. If this is a professional group, there should always be an assistant conductor who is prepared to take over.

[Mark]

Who was the assistant conductor ("person of color") who was Solti's assistant for a time?
At a CSO concert I attended (nearly three decades ago), he stepped in at the last minute and conducted Prokofiev 6.

But, there was no way he was sight-conducting it.