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.