 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2009-12-13 20:11
My question is exactly as the post states! Let's say you're going for a professional audition just for the experience, not intending to take the job should you get it. Could word get around that you're wasting people's time and could it hurt your reputation in future? What other situations could harm you?
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Author: JJAlbrecht
Date: 2009-12-13 20:58
If you are not serious about the position, it makes little sense to wast the time of the judges, as well as to take up a spot in the schedule. If such behavior is held against a person, it would be with good reason. If nothing else, you are wasting the time of the committee who is trying to select the best player.
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Author: FDF
Date: 2009-12-13 21:51
IMO, experience is a good thing. If you are looking toward the future, then gaining knowledge from putting yourself on the line is a good thing, with one qualification: you are actually trying to do your best.
At worst, judges change, time has its way of healing wounds, and, really, how many people will remember the terrible clarinetist who auditioned?
My opinion is my own, use it at your own risk.
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-12-13 21:55
If committees can hold auditions not intending to give the job out, it seems reasonable that a prospect can audition without intention of taking the job.
That said, I personally wouldn't audition without leaving the possibility open of taking the job. I'd do the audition, and in the off chance that I'm offered the position, I'd seriously weigh my options and decide whether to take it. If there's no chance of me taking the job, no, I wouldn't audition.
Approach any audition with "I'll consider taking it if I'm offered the position." Same as a job interview. That probably means no auditioning for community orchestras 500 miles from home.
If you're auditioning "for the experience," chances are, with all due respect, that you're small potatoes and that they won't remember your name in 10 minutes, let alone be concerned with audition-intention gossip.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: salzo
Date: 2009-12-13 22:18
"If committees can hold auditions not intending to give the job out, it seems reasonable that a prospect can audition without intention of taking the job."
That is a good point. If they can make people go to the trouble of shelling out time and bucks for an audition that the commitee has no intentions of hiring, or much less listening to those auditioning, then they should certainly deal with the inconvenience of too many audition "candidates (for lack of a better term).
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-14 02:22
First of all, almost all auditions today are behind a screen, at least for the major orchestra's in the USA, so the committee will not know who you are when you play but they can find out later if someone really want to find out. With that said though, you should never go to an audition if you don't think you can at least play respectfully. I've always told my students, and everyone else for that matter, that if you can't play everything on the list well enough to possibly win you have no right wasting their time and yours. Yes, getting the experience is good but only if you can make a respectful showing. Some of the smaller orchestra's, part time ones, you will probably have to play in front of the conductor right off the bat and they would certainly remember you if you suck. ESP http://eddiesclarinet.com
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-12-15 18:24)
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2009-12-14 04:53
Most auditions in the UK are NOT held behind screens.
"If committees can hold auditions not intending to give the job out"...
I've never heard of this. Why would any committee do that?
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Author: EEBaum
Date: 2009-12-14 05:15
I've heard talk of orchestras having auditions for a position hoping for a certain player, and when that player doesn't audition, they declare that nobody who auditioned met their standards. Same orchestra, some darn good players auditioning, spot stayed unfilled after many auditions.
Totally agree with Ed on being able to play everything respectably.
-Alex
www.mostlydifferent.com
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2009-12-14 06:51
"I've heard talk of orchestras having auditions for a position hoping for a certain player"...
Sounds like unsubstantiated gossip to me. It's often easy to read things into a situation like this from the outside, whereas the real story can be something completely different.
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Author: susannah
Date: 2009-12-14 07:39
""I've heard talk of orchestras having auditions for a position hoping for a certain player"...
Sounds like unsubstantiated gossip to me. It's often easy to read things into a situation like this from the outside, whereas the real story can be something completely different."
No, it's certainly been known to happen, don't be too trusting!
As for the original question, if you absolutely would not take the job if you won it, I don't think you should audition. Apart from wasting people's time, if you know you don't want the job you probably won't prepare as well as you would for a 'real' audition, so the experience wouldn't be all that meaningful anyway.
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Author: Lelia Loban ★2017
Date: 2009-12-14 12:28
After reading that a theater across the river from me in Washington, D.C. is putting on a production of "A Little Night Music," with big stars such as Angela Lansbury but an orchestra of only nine musicians, I can only congratulate any clarinet player secure enough and in demand enough to turn down a job offer.
Lelia
http://www.scoreexchange.com/profiles/Lelia_Loban
To hear the audio, click on the "Scorch Plug-In" box above the score.
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Author: Liquorice
Date: 2009-12-14 14:12
"No, it's certainly been known to happen, don't be too trusting!"
Certainly? Where and when?
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Author: Neal Raskin
Date: 2009-12-15 00:13
You should audition for the job, not for experience. Experience is a benefit gained by taking an audition. Make sure you know why you are taking the audition.
www.youtube.com/nmraskin
www.musicedforall.com
Post Edited (2009-12-15 00:16)
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Author: Morrigan
Date: 2009-12-15 06:27
To be clear; I'm not taking any audition, it was just a thought.
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Author: skygardener
Date: 2009-12-15 12:59
"Let's say you're going for a professional audition just for the experience, not intending to take the job should you get it. Could word get around that you're wasting people's time and could it hurt your reputation in future?"
Well, to be realistic about it, no one could possibly know if you had planned on getting the job or the experience unless you told someone and word got around. They can't read your mind.
However, part of the "experience" in that you want the job. If you go into it thinking "I don't want this job" you will clearly not have the same tension or worry about doing everything perfectly, right? So, in a way, it won't be an "experience" in the same way.
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-15 16:04
"I've heard talk of orchestras having auditions for a position hoping for a certain player"...
Well, that certainly does happen in orchestra's today but it does not mean that that person get's the job. We've had auditions that it was known that the conductor or a principal player of a section wanted a certain player to win but every time I've been aware of it the person in question never even made it to the final round. Just because someone in an upper position wants someone to audition, hoping they will win the job, doesn't mean they will. Here in Baltimore, as in most US orchestra's, the player has to play for a committee behind a screen before they can move on to the semi finals and that too is behind a screen. So in these cases even if the conductor or principal player wanted to have someone win the job, they never even made it to the finals. With us, the conductor does not even have a vote until tine final round and does not usually even come to the first two rounds.
We've even had a time when after having a national audition, and no one won the job, the conductor would ask to invite some other players to perform with our orchestra without an audition but even in those few cases that I remember the players that the conductor asked for did not win the job. In our orchestra a player needs to have the majority of a nine member committee plus the conductor to win a position in Baltimore. It is slightly different in other orchestra's in the US. ESP
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-12-15 18:21)
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Author: Ed Palanker
Date: 2009-12-15 18:32
Sorry, off track. Original question. Will it hurt you if you are offered the job and turn it down?
I think it's the reason you turn it down. Perhaps you can't reach an agreement on the salary, or you have demands they can't or won't meet, like instant tenure, getting certain guarantees or help paying for moving expenses or whatever. I don't think it hurt Ricardo Morales to much, if at all, after he won the principal job in Chicago and turned it down. We really don't know why he turned it down, one must assume he had demands that they would not meet or personal reasons. ESP
ESP eddiesclarinet.com
Post Edited (2009-12-16 03:33)
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