Yes, believe it or not the summer is wrapping up and it is time to get ready for school again. This means getting audition music to students for ensemble auditions. I make all of my students play standard orchestral excerpts (the excerpts rotate) every semester for auditions for our ensembles. The idea is that this is one way for them to learn these excerpts and to get used to playing them under pressure (an altogether different experience than just learning them). Yes, the freshman are are at a disadvantage in that the older students have a better idea how to prepare. But, as the freshman level has improved so has their performance in these auditions and it is becoming more common for a freshman to beat an upperclassmen!

My students have also all had assignments over the summer to work for their first lessons. One thing I am going to do differently this fall though is that the first week of classes we will meet in group lessons (the whole studio) during percussion ensemble and studio class times. This way EVERYONE in the studio will review all of the basics on snare, mallets, timpani and auxiliary instruments the first week of class. It helps to be review for the older students and introduces our approach to the new ones. In addition it gives them a week to settle in to school before we really jump into private lessons.

I am borrowing this idea from the great John Wooden (amazing UCLA basketball coach). He talks in his books how EVERY season started the exact same way: learning the UCLA way. So every season they would all learn how to lace their shoes, tape their ankles etc. and this applied to all the players. I thought that this seems like a logical way to keep everyone focused on reviewing the basic techniques of our instruments at the start of each semester. It could also help show them how important these fundamentals are!

As we advance in our skills, fundamentals, which
are so important, tend to fall by the wayside and the musician suffers for it.

Kalman Cherry, Timpanist: Dallas Symphony. Always told us that if we encountered problems with playing, break the problem down to the very basic level, and most times the problem would involve a weakness at that level. Once that was isolated and corrected the "major" issue would take care of it's self.

Frosty the Freelancer