Practice for Pro
Welcome to the first of many posts about the experiences, lessons, and more that I encounter throughout my life as a musician. I’ll be posting about events and cool stuff happening in my life as they come up, but at least once a month I’d like to share some wisdom that I’ve gleaned from my recent experiences as a young professional, with the hopes that you can learn from my mistakes and missteps as I have. I’m so glad you’re here! If you would like to be notified when I post updates, you can join my email list here. Without further ado, this first post will be dedicated to my recent auditions and learning some lessons the hard way.
Recently I’ve had the opportunity to participate in many auditions for both scholastic and professional ensembles. From August to October, I’ll have taken NINE orchestra auditions alone! Now, that’s a lot of auditions, and in hindsight it may have been a couple too many, especially for my first cycle of professional auditions. However, I learned SO much from these last several weeks, on both preparation and execution of auditions, that I still believe it was worthwhile, and I wanted to share some of the things that I’ve learned so far.
1. Don’t rank your opportunities.
“How you do anything is how you do everything.”
It can be an incredibly humbling experience to receive your first letter of rejection, especially if it’s from a “smaller” or more local orchestra. Unfortunately, I learned the hard way that you don’t win a job because you studied with so and so at some big, fancy music school, or because you did a few mocks for your studio class. I fell into a common trap for young professionals by thinking that I was surely going to win this job simply because I worked hard and played my absolute best in the audition. Unfortunately, it doesn’t always shake out like that, but it can be educational to give it a shot either way. Sometimes you’re going to walk into an audition that your best isn’t up to snuff for, and sometimes you’re going to walk into an audition and be the best player in the room—but don’t get cocky now. This leads me into my next point:
2. There is no job too big or too small.
First and foremost, professionalism is the name of the game. And part of being a professional is showing up to the gig as prepared you could possibly be, whether you’re playing a concerto with the New York Phil or filling in with your school orchestra or wind ensemble for a day. Either way, it’s the same professional walking into the room. One of my mentors Chad Miller always says “How you do anything is how you do everything,” so do everything with the same intensity that you would do your dream job!
3. Details!
In an audition, the big picture is super important. If you can’t play with good fundamentals, nail the three T’s (Time, Tune, and Tone), and play with some essence of appropriate style, the committee won’t give you a second glance. However there’s more to winning a job than nailing the basics. You have to get into the details. This is where research, working with a teacher, and (if you’re lucky) playing the literature in context will be paramount in setting you up for success in your auditions. How loud do you play Mahler vs. Mozart? How long do you play Prokofiev vs. Stravinsky? An audition committee (especially in later rounds) wants to see more than a technician--they want to see a whole musician. For these auditions, I drew from a variety of resources, including The One Hundred by Megumi Kanda (which I highly recommend both for access to excerpts and musical insight) and my teacher here at Oberlin, Dr. John Gruber. Keep working on your fundamentals, but start digging into the nitty gritty as soon as possible.
4. Don’t make everything a competition.
I know what you’re thinking: ‘But Cameron, aren’t auditions inherently competitive? Only one person can win the job, right?’ Well, yes, that’s technically correct. But auditions can be more than a competition. Auditions are a great opportunity to meet peers, especially on your instrument, introduce yourself to personnel managers and current members of the orchestra, as well as network with anyone and everyone you have the time to meet. Your first priority is to nail your audition, but with the time that you have to stand around in the warm up room or wait at the door, introduce yourself to the people around you. Surely I can’t be the only one who stuck with music this long because of all of the amazing people that I’ve met, so that probably means that musicians are some pretty cool people most of the time! Additionally, you have the chance to compound opportunities by planting the seed for future gigs when they’re thinking of referrals down the line.
These are just a few of the things that I’ve learned about taking auditions in the past few weeks. If you have any questions, or want to let me know how your auditions are going, message me via social media or contact me. Thanks for reading! Don’t forget to subscribe to my email list to get notifications when I post!