Let's start this forum off with some good news:

I attended the Minnesota Orchestra's viola audition a month ago, and one aspect stood out for me in what was otherwise a very normal audition experience (apart from a waiting day between rounds - oh well): all candidates were given their results individually, one at a time. At least while I was there, a staff person called each candidate out of the waiting room to personally inform them of the committee's decision.

Usually, everyone sits around until the cattle-call announcement, and the only acknowledgment you get is NOT hearing your number called (unless you advance, in which case they're more than happy to talk with you). I thought what Minn. did was classy. It's tough to have have to give so many people bad news face to face, but I thought it showed a great deal of respect to everyone who auditioned, whether or not they advanced. If any other orchestras do this as well, good for you.

Good to hear, Joel. Our longtime personnel manager, Julie Haight, feels very strongly that personally speaking to each candidate is the only humane way to do it, and I was impressed with that aspect of the process when I auditioned here, as well. (By the last round, however, we'd all figured out that she calls the people who've advanced last, so every time she entered the room, we all squinched our eyes shut hoping not to here our name yet...)

On another note regarding, I'd be interested in hearing whether anyone has been put off of one of our MN Orch auditions by the fact that we typically spread them over 4 or even 5 days, usually across a weekend and ending on a Monday. There are good reasons why we do this (primarily that we don't screen out anyone based on resumes, and we don't always have full-time access to the hall if there are other events scheduled over the weekend,) but in recent years we've been seeing fewer candidates than we used to, and I'm curious to know if the scheduling has anything to do with it...

Sam,

I think having your audition spread out to accommodate all participants is a good thing. How many days are the prelims and how how many days are dedicated to the finals?

If someone were to make the cut on the first day and then have to stay in town for the finals happening on the 5th day, that could be quite a financial burden.

Hi Sam,
I took the viola audition in Minnesota a few years ago, and I found that the scheduling was sort of problematic for two reasons. Financially, it's more of a burden to pay for a hotel for more time (and can be that much more frustrating if one doesn't make it "all the way"). Also, for me, it was more mentally taxing because I felt like the usual audition "rhythm" was broken up by having that extra time between rounds. It's hard to keep the momentum going with so much down time. I don't think it's necessarily something that your orchestra needs to change - it's just a different kind of challenge, and each audition seems to have its own unique set of challenges!

I was hoping to attend the last MN audition but wasn't able to because the audition was so spread out. It spanned two different service weeks with my current orchestra, so it would have been next to impossible to get all that time off. Even if it was possible to get the time off, the financial cost would have been huge when you add up money lost from missed services, plane ticket, 5 days in a hotel, etc. I decided instead to attend a different audition that had a more reasonable schedule. Maybe next time!

Yeah, the two service weeks thing seems like the biggest issue to me. I know we're not the only orchestra with spread-out auditions, but the fact that we always finish on a Monday rather than a Saturday or Sunday is inconvenient for anyone in an orchestra that has regular Monday rehearsals. I think the assumption is that most orchestras have Mondays off, but I have no idea if that's true. (And even if it is, since our final round sometimes stretches into the evening, getting back for a Tuesday rehearsal could be difficult as well.)

Again, I don't know if there's a solution, but I hope we'll try other schedules in the future. We've had a ton of openings lately, so we've had to cram them in wherever there's a weekend with the music director in town.

I have also decided not to take an audition in MN for the same reasons: too much time off work, and prohibitively high hotel costs. I do admire the reasoning behind the five-day process, but it's definitely a trade-off for the extra money candidates have to spend. I took the St. Louis audition in September, and I noticed in the paperwork they sent out that the SLSO would pay for the travel costs of those who made it to the final round. That is not something I have seen before, and it wouldn't help someone who doesn't advance but can't change a plane ticket. But especially for a five-day audition (SLSO was not that long), that would be helpful to a few people. It's an interesting idea if an orchestra can swing it financially, but I realize most ensembles can't or won't go for that idea.

Sam, I seem to recall you saying the same thing elsewhere regarding Mondays. In my very limited experience, I haven't seen many orchestras that rehearse on Monday. If that is generally true, it would perhaps make more sense to start auditions on a Monday, when more people would be attending. Of course, you run into Sunday concerts, airplane fare is more expensive on Sundays, yadda yadda. I suppose there is no such thing as the perfect time. Maybe we should just decide all this by lottery.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the finals for the last MN audition was on October 31st, a Tuesday. Yes Mondays are generally days off, but not Tuesdays.

The one thing that made me not want to audition in MN, was the TWO juries and TWO different audition rooms. One group plays for one jury in the hall, and the other group plays for another jury in some other "room". Hmmmm... I guess that was before they decided to spread it out...maybe they only use one jury now. But at the time, I didn't think it was fair. There are other orchestras that do this as well.

You're right, vlaguy, our recent audition did end on a Tuesday. This was the first time I can ever recall our doing this, and I believe it was due to a severely limited amount of time that we were able to use the hall that weekend. Ordinarily, this would be a situation where we would simply put the audition on a different weekend, but at the moment, the orchestra has so many openings (due to a slew of recent retirements and departures, as well as a hiring slowdown from our last contract that we're only starting to dig out from) that we need to use every available weekend.

As for the anger over split audition committees, I've heard before that this upsets people, and never quite understood why. We traditionally split the committee in two for part of the first round so that we can hear everyone as quickly as possible, and not tack on yet another day to the audition. We always make sure that the first 5-6 candidates are heard by the entire committee, before the split, so that the committee will have time to discuss what they've heard and establish a benchmark level for advancement. Each split committee always includes one of our top titled players, and the rule for us has always been that, when we are split up, we err on the side of letting through anyone we think might be a borderline case. As for the fact that one of the split committees is hearing candidates somewhere other than the stage, I don't see how it's relevant. Is the acoustic different? Of course. But we're not listening in a vacuum - we know all about the acoustic in both spaces, and we make allowances for the difference. An excerpt that sounds pinched in the rehearsal room might sound lovely on stage, and as I said, in that first round, we will always err on the side of advancement as a result. (Furthermore, many orchestras that don't own their own halls have their auditions entirely off site or in a space that bears no resemblance to a stage. Is this unfair as well? Or is it just the split that's so offensive?)

quote:

Or is it just the split that's so offensive?

To me its the split. I've taken many auditions off-site from the orchestra's hall, and although its definitely less desireable, EVERYONE is in the same boat, dealing with the exact same accoustic, and the committee is hearing everyone in the same light.

The bottom line is that in a split venue situation, everyone is not on a completely level field. There are different ears in each room, and different playing conditions in each venue (and not just accoustic - what about temperature and other environmental factors?)

I've heard of more than a few split auditions (perhaps not MN specifically), where one jury passed large numbers, and the other advanced next to no-one. Did one location randomly get all of the less qualified candidates? I doubt it!

Obviously, I can't speak for any auditions but MN Orch's (and even then, only for viola auditions,) but my experience has been that the number of players advanced tends to be fairly even from each room. There may have been times when one room or the other had an extra advance or two, but it certainly hasn't skewed in favor of the stage. (If it really made a difference, we'd stop doing it.)

The bottom line in our viola section is this: in the first round, we're really not doing most of our judging based on intricacies of sound and tone quality. The people who advance are the ones who can play everything in rhythm, without rushing or dragging, and in tune, all with a certain level of musical energy. None of those factors are affected by the acoustic. (Also, since there are four people in each split in our case, we consider any tie votes to be a vote to advance, and there have even been times when a single committee member making an impassioned case for a candidate has been enough to advance someone.)

As you say, there are different ears in each room, but honestly, in the first round, everyone can hear the same things, because our criteria for passing someone on are so narrow. Pitch, rhythm, energy. I know no one ever wants to believe that they lack any of those qualities, but 95% of the people we dismiss after the first round are out because they couldn't play consistently in rhythm or in tune. And that is just never going to be affected by whether you're on a stage or in a rehearsal room.

I have no problem with split auditions, however:

One time I took one where my commitee passed one person to the finals, me. The other committee passed 15. They basically has a runoff of 30 seconds of Bach. Seriously, they had a second round where you got 30 seconds for the whole round.

Regarding split committees: we did not split in our last viola audition in Oregon, though we had previously. Mostly, it was due to the high number of applicants the first time around. It also has to do with keeping the committees' ear fresh by limiting the number of candidates each listens to in that situation. Personalities can play a part, we've had the same problem that Cygnus refers to, one committee is super hard-core, the other is very easy. Often, it's just out of our control. We don't own our hall, so often we have to use other venues that cannot accommodate large numbers of candidates, or they aren't available for the full time span of the audition, etc. We'd also rather not have candidates stay until 10:30 at night (like a Baltimore audition I took part in back in '94) or even longer.

For me, it doesn't matter if it's ALL in one place, even if it's a church, or a rehearsal room, etc....as long as everyone plays in the same place. So Sam, do you not listen for sound in the first round? For me, that's definitely up there with rhythm, intonation and musicality....

I have also heard of very strict juries that pass almost nobody on vs more easygoing ones that pass several people on. That would discourage me from auditioning again.

Certainly I listen for sound, but I'd rather hear someone's sound develop over the course of the audition. Good players can have a bad few minutes, soundwise, for any number of reasons. But when it comes to the first round, I'm just looking to weed out the people I know right off the bat I don't want sitting next to me. That includes anyone who can't play in tune or in rhythm on a consistent basis.

And before anyone suggests it, I'm not saying that one flubbed run or rushed phrase is an automatic ejection in my book. But if we hear the concerto and four excerpts, and three of the four excerpts have bad rhythm or the concerto and two excerpts are badly out of tune? You're done, and I don't need to hear another round to know that, no matter how good your sound is. Sound is a subtler quality, and one that I'm not eager to judge on the basis of only a few excerpts. So I take copious notes for future use if the candidate gets to finals (when we're given the trackback to earlier rounds,) but in the first round, as one of my teachers, Lynne Ramsey, always used to say, it's "just the facts, ma'am."

I know this drives some people nuts (especially those with bad rhythm and intonation,) but playing in an orchestra is very different than playing chamber music or solo rep for a living. Your artistic individuality is nice, and can help you win a job, but it will not make up for a lack of fundamentals. This is a team sport, and the #1 thing we need to know about any auditioning candidate is whether s/he can play with the team.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Sam Bergman,

Just to address the "all in the same room" issue - I'd say that would be vital if the same people were listening to everyone, but in two different rooms. Since there are two groups of people listening, they're only going by the differences between candidates in the same acoustic. Future rounds held in the same space would allow comparison between candidates in an identical acoustic. It's always apples to apples, even with a split committee.