I know that happens quite a bit when even players of the instrument in an audition can’t agree. I’ve also heard many cases where the music director wanted one player while the committee wanted someone else, etc.

Feuermann, well said. I haven’t sat on nearly as many committees, but I have heard from players of major orchestras that sometimes even their own committee members are just “too picky”. I can understand cleanliness, but sometimes the “perfect” expectation is held too high – OR players can sometimes even be “too perfect”! which reminds me of what you said about players in the orchestra wanting one set of standards when they’ve been out of the audition circuit for who knows how long. Fortunately & unfortunately, the level IS steadily advancing, like with young student musicians compared to when I was in middle/high school.

This is a little off topic, but does anyone know why Heather Clark resigned from the Pacific Symphony? The audition is posted, Sept. 3-4.

quote:

Originally posted by monkeychild:
At the risk of adding fuel to the fire, I'd like to pose a simple, though perhaps naive question: What are orchestra's looking for anyway? I had a discussion recently about orchestral auditioning/playing and it was said that a person who won a job had to be ready to go on day one. The winner had to "fit in" from the first. While I agree that a person who takes on an orchestral job must be able to handle the demands both technically and musically, what of artistic growth? Should a new member of an orchestral flute section be fully formed from the moment they first sit in their chair?

THANK YOU, and not "naive" at all...

Life takes time.

An MD must have perception (multi-levels) & vision, in choosing players.

If you can feel the "spirit" of a player even though they might be only 70% "there",
then I would hire that player...

Management in these days tends to operate on "fear". (because they don't "perceive")

If you slow-cook a vat of soup: how long does that take?

And maybe next year it might be better.

(patience...)(& perception)(are the keys...)

It's easy to get a bit too artsy-fartsy about all of this (see post immediately preceding this one).

The first thing a committee and MD should be "looking for" is a player with an excellent, reliable technique who plays in tune and has good rhythm. These things are relatively easy to discern in an audition. Then there is the matter of tone quality. This is more subjective, and we start getting into matters of taste. Most difficult of all are the questions of temperament and artistry. No one wants a perfect but cold robot in a principal or one-on-a-part position. (Many might think such a player is OK or even desirable for a section string player, but I'm not going to get into that one right now.) And no one wants the Wild Man From Borneo, either.

Since tone and artistry are subjective, it's important to have many voices offering input for the final selection. If 8 out of 10 committee members think that candidate A offers the most artistic playing of the finalists, and 2 out of 10 think that candidate B does, then candidate A is probably the greater artist, even though it's difficult for any of us to define what is meant by "artist" or "artistic playing". Like the old saying: "If you ask me, I don't know; if you don't ask me, I know".

Then there are matters of personality, compatibility, and skill at ensemble playing. These things can be discovered only later, on the job during the pre-tenure period.

It might be useful to rethink our nomenclature for the audition procedure. What we now call the finals, I think of as only the preliminaries - the true final audition is the first season, when the orchestra and MD get an extended look at how the winning candidate performs repertoire of different styles under varying conditions. It's important to see if they can handle the daily grind and pressure, and are good for the long haul as well as brief, meteoric spurts. They will either blossom or fold, and we cannot know which will happen based on a brief audition. A 20 minute audition enables us to pick the most promising candidate, but that is still only a promise, with much remaining to be established.

And finally, there is the endlessly debated question of whether to prefer an experienced player who plays a solid audition over a more talented but greener candidate. Personally, I usually prefer talent over experience. Experience without exceptional talent is a dead end; exceptional talent without experience offers the chance of unlimited growth, and a galvanizing new presence in the orchestra that can elevate us out of the doldrums.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Feuermann,

quote:

Originally posted by barrere2:
This is a little off topic, but does anyone know why Heather Clark resigned from the Pacific Symphony? The audition is posted, Sept. 3-4.

It wasn't anything scandalous from what I understand. I think she just got too busy with other freelance work in the LA area. She already plays in 2 other orchestras in town, plus a lot of session work.

RE: Flute3000
The MET's audition process is great because their contract makes sure both of these things happen. But, deciding ALWAYS to hire someone is risky for orchestras without a pool of applicants like the MET's.
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In this day and age, I would be surprised if most audition pools (once you get past a certain wage rate, anyway) are markedly inferior to those at MET (or any Big 5) audition.

RE: Fuermann
Which leads us to an Unpleasant Truth that few in an orchestra would want to admit: many people on the outside actually play better, and could do a better job, than many of the people already in the orchestra. How many of us in the orchestra could win our own jobs if we had to audition now?
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Indeed. This is not a criticism of any player in any orchestra, but it simply stands to reason that most orchestra players' skills will probably improve early in their careers, and then begin an inexorable decline. Even allowing for maturity compensating for technical brilliance. Meanwhile, the younger generation is always getting better. Add to that some level of arbitrariness in auditions (at least to the extent that if you were to repeat an audition with the same candidate pool several times, you probably won't get the same result every time), and I would imagine it's a good bet that even in the best orchestras, a lot of players wouldn't win their jobs if they had to audition for them again. And it's not unique to orchestras; I'm not sure I would beat out newbies for an entry-level job in my profession, either.

I'm not sure that it's an unpleasant truth. I'm not sure it's really a truth of any kind. It's true that there are limits (10? 15? 20 years?) to the benefits of experience in one orchestra. But the presumption that there are "better players out there" is certainly not necesarily true, and based on my experience in 6 more or less full-time orchestra positions, whether or not that is the case is a matter of corporate culture. Every orchestra, and for that matter each section within an orchestra, has a a different standard of what ongoing level of playing is acceptable. My observation on the LA Phil, my band, is that there is not a one-to-one relationship between best players and newest players. I presume it is the same for all "terminal position" orchestras. Perhaps less so for orchestras from which people leave to move up to a terminal-position orchestra.

I recently had an interesting take on this idea of the "better players out there" notion. I recently took an audition (!) for a slightly prestigious solo opportunity here in L.A. Also in the mix were hot young players studying (as soloists) at our fine local school, the Thornton School at U.S.C. I have every confidence that I will lose out to those hot shots. I also have every confidence that my LAPhil colleagues would rather be playing with me in the orchestra than those hot shots. (Of course I have to believe this. Otherwise....no, no, I just have to believe this.)

quote:

But the presumption that there are "better players out there" is certainly not necesarily [sic] true

Well, better spellers out there, anyway.

All of us already in orchestras can console ourselves with that self deception most common to musicians - that our artistry far outpaces our technique, and most other players are "hotshots", who are, of course, only technical talents who could never play as musically as we do, even though they have fingers out the wazoo.

quote:

All of us already in orchestras can console ourselves with that self deception most common to musicians - that our artistry far outpaces our technique, and most other players are "hotshots", who are, of course, only technical talents who could never play as musically as we do, even though they have fingers out the wazoo.

Or we could just think of ourselves as lucky.

quote:

All of us already in orchestras

Feuermann, how many of "all of us" do you mean to speak for? I'll bet you're being overly modest to suggest that you couldn't compete for your own job, if need be. I know that I could be cempetitive for mine, as could many of my Philharmonic colleagues.

As to qualities of playing, beyond merely good or bad, I've heard this analogy: a greyhound is faster than a husky, but you don't want a greyhound on your sled team.

Some of the playing I heard last week was excellent playing, but it (a fabulous Ysaye solo violin sonata comes to mind) gives almost no indication of whether or not that player can play well in an orchestra. The qualities that make an exciting Ysaya Sonata only partially overlap with the qualities that make, for example, the cellos and violas sound good at the beginning of the second movement of Beethoven 5.

quote:

Originally posted by BBodden:


Or we could just think of ourselves as lucky.

Amen, brother.

quote:

Originally posted by David Garrett:

quote:

All of us already in orchestras

Feuermann, how many of "all of us" do you mean to speak for? I'll bet you're being overly modest to suggest that you couldn't compete for your own job, if need be.

You are right; I shouldn't have said "all of us". "Many of us" would have been better.

No, I doubt if I could compete for my own job. Perhaps players under 40 still could, or the few exceptions who were phenomenal to begin with and, for some reason, lose very little until the very end of their careers. I have known only a few such players.

quote:

As to qualities of playing, beyond merely good or bad, I've heard this analogy: a greyhound is faster than a husky, but you don't want a greyhound on your sled team.

Look, an orchestra concert is not a sled race, which is purely a grind that rewards stamina. There's very little artistry involved in the Iditarod. Nor is a concert like two hours at the greyhound track, with the conductor's baton representing the mechanical rabbit. For orchestral playing we need both artistry and stamina. I wouldn't want either the greyhound or the husky for an orchestra position. Maybe the poodle.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Feuermann,

quote:

I wouldn't want either the greyhound or the husky for an orchestra position. Maybe the poodle.

Aha! I knew it!! You're not really an orchestra player. You're in marketing!

Cheers to all!

I find it interesting and depressing to see so much discussion on how we aren't as good as we were at 20. I had this discussion with a friend(who has an orchestra job) and she fills like she is not as good as she was, but I have lots of high school friends that feel they are still developing as they enter the end of the 40's. I personally feel I am a better player now, at 20 I could wiggle my fingers really fast, but in my forties I have had years of experience teaching , playing and conducting. The difference I notice between the friends that feel they are in the declining years and those that feel like they are still developing is the attitude that they are still learning and creating and willing to try new things. In other words, we keep trying to get better. Sure there are things like carpel tunnel syndrome, strained muscles etc...but I had friends at my conservatory that had them too. I had a teacher tell me once that I had to love every note, and while I don't always look forward to high F#, when I play him I feel obligated to give him my best. Our we losing our ability to play after 40 or just our drive? Is the down side of having a regular gig that we just get lazy?

quote:

Originally posted by barrere2:
I find it interesting and depressing to see so much discussion on how we aren't as good as we were at 20. I had this discussion with a friend(who has an orchestra job) and she fills like she is not as good as she was, but I have lots of high school friends that feel they are still developing as they enter the end of the 40's. I personally feel I am a better player now, at 20 I could wiggle my fingers really fast, but in my forties I have had years of experience teaching , playing and conducting. The difference I notice between the friends that feel they are in the declining years and those that feel like they are still developing is the attitude that they are still learning and creating and willing to try new things. In other words, we keep trying to get better. Sure there are things like carpel tunnel syndrome, strained muscles etc...but I had friends at my conservatory that had them too. I had a teacher tell me once that I had to love every note, and while I don't always look forward to high F#, when I play him I feel obligated to give him my best. Our we losing our ability to play after 40 or just our drive? Is the down side of having a regular gig that we just get lazy?

I've wondered a lot about this over time. I think part of it is while you're in school, you always have confirmation & word about what you do well & don't do well. If someone gets a job & doesn't take many (if any) auditions, then of course they may not be as good of an "auditioner" as the other recent grads, even if they have years of experience. So, does that mean older players (40+, example) need to keep taking lessons & playing for others just as teachers constantly tell students to do? At the same time, when I get to a certain age, I would like to be done with auditions period & enjoy just playing my instrument instead of worrying about getting ready for "the next audition".