Re: sight-reading...for music director applicants
Posted: Mon May 06, 2019 10:14 am
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.bloke wrote: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...