Sunday, February 18, 2007

My AIMS Audition

For those not in 'the know,' AIMS is an 5-week annual musical festival held annualy in Austria. And, every year, there is an annual audition 'tour' where auditions are held in different locations from January to March. Eastman, Julliard, Chicago, LA...most of the big cities are covered. On Sunday, Feb 11, I auditioned at the one held at SMU in Dallas. I had to drive around a while to find parking, but I still got in the music building with plenty of time to warm up.

I had expected that there would be an actual audition committe but when I entered the room, it was just the orchestra manager and a microphone. In retrospect, I guess that I should have expected it.

The required audition repertoire was a movement of a concerto and 5 specific excerpts.


Here's how it went, in order:

1. I chose the first movement of the Grohndal for my solo. It went ok..the tempo was fairly steady but I did miss a few notes and made an error at an entrance. The orchestra guy stopped me after the halfway point. The AIMS provided accompanist was sightreading everything and did a so-so job.

2. Mahler 3rd - Fairly well. A tad sloppy in the lower register but I felt like I kept the style fairly consistant and played the various 'tempo' markings well.

3. Tuba Mirum - Went well.

4. William Tell Overture - Went very well. The judge comments, though not that loudly, 'excellent' afterwards. Don't worry, I'm not reading too much into it. I'm glad that this one went well because I had really been busting my hump on it.

5. Schumann Symphony #3, 4th mvt., 1st 8 measures - I played through it and I wasn't that happy with it(The high Eb was a bit thin and I flubbed one or two other notes) but didn't say anything. After I finished, The orchestra manager said 'Let's try that again.' So I played it again and I'll be durned if I didn't play it WORSE the 2nd time. I flubbed the high Eb, barely getting it at all, and cracked 2 or 3 other notes. ARRRRGGGGGGGHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That was so frustrating because I had played it and played it well before. Here, I had two shots at it and screwed it up both times. I think that I just didn't concentrate enough on a big enough second breath. A week later, this still bothers me.

6. Lohengrin, Prelude to Third Act - This went well. The orchestra manager comments 'good' afterwards(again not reading too much into that).


So it was an ok audition. To be honest, I think that any chance that I had of making the orchestra died when I flubbed up the Schumann a 2nd time.

It would have been fun, though.

Friday, February 16, 2007

Buffalo, Here I Come!!

So, I'm all set for Buffalo. Got my plane ticket, rental car reserved, hotel room reserved. I'm excited for the trip. My actual audition is in Feb. 25th with the finals on the 27th. I'm flying in on the afternoon of the 24th and flying out the evening of the 27th. I could have just anticipated not making the finals and scheduled my flight back for the 26th but I figured I needed to be hopeful about things.

Even though its a 2nd trombone position and pays about $40k a year, I figure there should be around 100 trombonists there. The preliminaries take 2 days and they'll probably pick between 3 and 5 players for the finals(if they like that many). It'll be a good experience, at the very least.

I've been practicing quite a bit lately and I'm in the best shape that I've been for a while, at lease since I've been out of school. Its been a bear preparing for this thing because of the huge amount of material that's being asked; 16 excerpt and a portion of a Bach Cello Suite. Its stretched me thin to get it all ready in time.


Because of my flight schedule I have 1 day, the 26th, with absolutely nothing to do. So I figured that I would go over to Palmyra and look at some LDS church history sites(i.e. Book of Mormon publication site, Joseph Smith farm, Hill Cumorah visitors center) since its only about 90 minutes away. Should be a fun day.

Wish me luck!