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Doublereed Archive - Posting 000086.txt from 2004/01

From: D Bogan <dgbogan@-----.net>
Subj: [DR-L] Preparing for an audition
Date: Mon, 19 Jan 2004 09:25:37 -0500

All ears for perfection
Musicians spend countless hours preparing for a
10-minute audition with a major orchestra
By ELAINE SCHMIDT
Special to the Journal Sentinel
Posted: Jan. 17, 2004
No four words can crush an orchestral musician's
spirit quite like "Thank you. Next please."

Auditions

Graphic/Theresa Schiffer

Quotable

Winning an audition is a life-changing event. It's
like winning the lottery, except that there is a great
deal of skill involved.

- Rip Pretat,
assistant personnel manager for the Milwaukee Symphony
Orchestra

Photo/File
Shawn Mouser (center), who has been assistant
principal bassoonist with the Milwaukee Symphony,
auditioned three times for the Los Angeles
Philharmonic before winning a spot last spring.

Photo/Erwin Gebhard
Principal tubist Alan Baer rehearses for a Milwaukee
Symphony concert this month. Baer spent extra time in
the fall practicing for auditions with New York and
D.C. symphonies. He accepted a job with the New York
Philharmonic.

Photo/File
Diana Haskell is on leave from the MSO as she works to
gain tenure with the St. Louis Symphony.

Related Coverage

Perfection: Musicians spend countless hours
Auditions: Requiring stamina

Orchestral musicians prepare for years, beginning with
childhood lessons and continuing through college or
conservatory training, practicing countless hours
along the way. Then on audition day, musicians are
given five to 10 minutes to impress a panel of
listeners, in the first step of a grueling, multiround
process that will end in disappointment for all but
one player.

Only 25 to 30 American orchestras offer full-time,
living-wage employment to musicians, said Jack
McAuliffe, vice president of the American Symphony
Orchestra League. An orchestra may have three or four
openings in a year, or perhaps none for several years,
with players in the larger orchestras holding their
jobs for decades.

Some instruments, such as tuba, piccolo and harp, are
used on a one-per-orchestra basis. Wind, brass and
percussion sections each require just a handful of
players. Even the cello section of a large orchestra
holds only about 10 players. Doing the math is
disheartening.

Despite these odds, three members of the Milwaukee
Symphony Orchestra, all of whom beat the odds once
already to win jobs here, have done it once again.
Each has moved up the musical food chain to orchestras
with longer seasons, better pay and other perks.

MSO principal tubist Alan Baer won the same job with
the National Symphony in Washington, D.C., this fall
only to turn it down a few weeks later when he won the
tuba spot with the New York Philharmonic.

Last spring, assistant principal bassoonist Shawn
Mouser won the associate principal bassoon spot with
the Los Angeles Philharmonic. A few months before
that, MSO assistant principal clarinetist Diana
Haskell won the assistant principal job with the St.
Louis Symphony. Both players are on leave from the MSO
while they earn tenure at their new jobs.

"Winning an audition is a life-changing event," said
Rip Pretat, assistant principal bassist and assistant
personnel manager for the Milwaukee Symphony. "It's
like winning the lottery, except that there is a great
deal of skill involved."

Study in superstition
Preparing for an audition is an all-consuming and
extremely personal process. Players have to find their
own means to perfect their performances and hold up
under the pressure-cooker of the audition.

"I like to take as many variables out of the process
as I can and live the audition process over and over
again," tubist Baer said.

No detail escapes his attention.

He begins, as do most players, by making a book of all
the excerpts that the orchestra has requested and any
additional excerpts he thinks he may be asked to
sight-read in the audition. In his practice he always
uses the same music stand and tuba stands (one for a
tuba in the key of C and one for an F tuba), and sits
on the same stool.

He sets up his equipment in exactly the same way every
time he practices and takes it all with him to the
audition, in a box weighing about 250 pounds, where he
sets it up that way again.

"I create a comfort zone, where everything is
automatic," he said.

Baer and Mouser, good friends from their years
together in the MSO, coined the term "boot camp" to
describe the process of getting ready for an audition.

"It's just like preparing for a big race or a big
game," Mouser said. The bassoonist's preparation
includes working out at a gym, switching to
decaffeinated coffee and taking vitamins to stay
healthy.

Baer gave up all alcohol. Because he was spending less
time in the gym and more time practicing, he also
modified his diet to stay fit and healthy and began
taking vitamins.

Practice is key
Setting up comfort zones, eating right and taking
vitamins may help get players in shape for an
audition, but nothing takes the place of plain old
practice.

Baer likes to work on the excerpts and etudes that
relate to technical issues the excerpts present. He
works on musicianship by playing Brahms' Lieder,
expressive vocal pieces with piano accompaniment. He
works on pitch by playing notes against a drone tone.

Baer will play pieces written for C tuba on the F
instrument, and vice versa, to avoid the musical and
technical ruts that repetition can create.

Mouser focuses on the excerpts, starting out slowly
with a metronome to ensure that tempo is constant and
rhythms are exact. Over the course of days and weeks
he gradually speeds them up, taking them faster in
small metronomic increments. Once they are up to
tempo, he slows them back down and starts over.

He also likes to work on fundamentals, scales and
arpeggios, that keep technique fluid, and he spends a
lot of time listening to recordings of pieces on the
audition list.

Haskell said she "becomes a hermit for a couple of
months" as she prepares.

"My audition preparation has changed dramatically,"
she said. "When I was young I really didn't know how
to prepare. I would practice excerpts, but I was kind
of haphazard about it."

Now in her 40s, Haskell has had to re-examine her
approach to the clarinet, both mentally and
physically.

"Warming up is really crucial for me now," she said.
"I pay much more attention to my body than I used to
when I was younger. I have realigned what I did with
the instrument to change some technical aspects of my
playing that I could get away with in my 20s and 30s."
She has included taking Alexander Technique classes to
rid herself of unwanted physical tension.

All three players try to play for other musicians as
much as possible, taking their comments to heart.

Playing for musicians who don't play your instrument
brings a different perspective, one unclouded by
knowledge of the instrument's technical quirks and
difficulties.

"I played in the concert hall at Wisconsin Lutheran
College as I was preparing," Haskell said. "I made
sure it was really cold in there and asked the people
listening to me to make lots of noise while I played.
I tried to create any unpredictable circumstances I
could, because auditions just never go the way you
think they are going to go."

She recalled an audition a few years ago in which a
stagehand walked on the stage while she was playing,
slamming a door loudly in the process. Someone else
kicked a soda can down some stairs as she played. She
was allowed to play again but was rattled by the
distractions.

Baer likes to practice outside, saying, "It's the
largest hall you will ever have to fill." He said that
all of the major auditions or competitions he has won
have included lots of outdoor practice.

In tune with rejection
Part of successful auditioning is learning be a good
loser.

The New York Philharmonic received more than 300
resumes for the tuba job Baer recently won, according
to Eric Latzky, director of public relations for the
orchestra. More than 100 players showed up for live
preliminary auditions at Avery Fisher Hall. Numerous
others sent tapes.

A smaller full-time orchestra such as the MSO will
receive about 150 resumes when a string opening is
announced, according to Pretat, with about 100 players
reserving a spot for a live audition. The number drops
just a bit for winds, brass and percussion auditions.

"Auditioning is not just a crapshoot," said Dean
Borghesani, principal timpanist with the MSO. "It's
hard work, perseverance and dealing with rejection."
He knows whereof he speaks. Borghesani took 28
auditions before he won his job with the MSO and is
currently in the early stages of writing a book on the
audition process.

"I know that auditions are very difficult to win and I
figure if it's meant to be, then it's meant to be,"
Haskell said. "I am not saying I get to that point on
the first day after the audition. I get kind of tired
and droopy for a little while after an audition I
don't win, but then I am fine."

Mouser and Baer used not winning in auditions for the
Boston Symphony Orchestra to hone their audition
skills. They took comments from the audition committee
to heart and purchased new instruments, which changed
their sound tremendously.

But rejection isn't permanent. Haskell auditioned for
St. Louis and was rejected, only to win the job a
couple years later. Mouser auditioned three times for
the Los Angeles Philharmonic, over the course of
several years, before winning.

Pretat added that after all the preparation, emotional
upheaval and considerable expense of taking an
audition, "A lot of it is just who had a good day and
who had a bad day."

From the Jan. 18, 2004 editions of the Milwaukee
Journal Sentinel

====
Donna G. Bogan
Double Your Reeds and Double Your Music--
Oboe, English horn, and Bassoon