Klarinet Archive - Posting 000218.txt from 2004/07
From: Tski1128@-----.com
Subj: Re: [kl] Bumblebee2
Date: Tue, 6 Jul 2004 04:02:07 -0400
Ok after one wakes up from the fantasy that you will somehow find the hidden music in Bunble Bee, and that upon hearing you the head of the woodwind dept will offer you a full tuition schoolarship, and you really figure out what the goal of an audition is, here is some advice.
1. know your scales, slow clean with out mistakes, with a beautiful sound
2. walk into the audition with a list of the things you've been studying for the last 2 years
3 pick 2 contrasting rose etudes, a nice slow one and one from the back of the book with some notes and some articulation
4. Play these 10 -20 times aday, try to memorize them. use the music for the audition
5. play them for your friends, parents and your present teacher, if you don't have a teacher get one!
6. understand that what you are after is this teacher accepting you into his or her studio.
When we used to audition clarinetists for the US Army Field Band, that prepared solo told the committee what you thought you were good at. Our next thought was what can't they do?
If some walked in playing Brahms or slow without any stacato passages, that's the first thing we ask from the prepared list, if we had a Neilson cadenza freak, we'd hit em with the slow over the break solo form " Force of Destiny". If a kid walked in to my studio for an audition playing the "Bee", I'd reach for rose 40#1. I most likely would win a bet that they would be sight reading. I have a problem with people graduating with Degrees in clarinet that haven't played through some of the etudes that are a must. And yes I find this is happening at Uof MD!
If you are lucky and get in to the teachers of you dreams studio. try this:
Shut up and do everything that person tells you to do. twice as long as they tell you to do it. I was lucky enough to study with the legendary Iggy gennusa when I was but a wee lad, if he told me that rubbing peanut butter on the reed was the key thing to sound like he did, I would have bought one of every brand, i would have rubbed over the reeds I would have done exactly what he told me. I wouldnt have try to tell him that it doesn't work, if it was something he did. I don't know how many times I've had a student tell me that something I'm asking them to do, isn't right, or won't work. BEFORE THEY'VE TRIED IT!
Sorry about the rant!
Tom Puwalski, author of "The Clarinetist's guide to Klezmer", former clarinet soloist with the US Army Field Band, Clarinetist with Lox&vodka and clarinetist with the hotest new klezmer band out there " The Atonement"
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