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Re: ATL Symphony Principal Clarinet

Author: HeyHoHey
Date: 2022-11-30 06:00

I’m happy that these posts have produced such an interesting discussion. It is a fascinating topic.

Jen made a comment about “ the lottery” notion, and I have to disagree somewhat. The last time I was a judge at an international music competition, I convinced my fellow jurors to put up the screen for the first round. We listened to about 150 candidates each play the same piece. Everyone got about 7 minutes. We did this over 2~3 days. No one was pre-advanced—this was a solo competition.

When jurors are listening to a high volume participant audition/competition, it is all taking place behind a screen, and the judges understand that they must advance some people, it amazing how much agreement there is on the basis of ability—i.e.”who played the best”. Great players really stick out in this situation. When I judged orchestral blind auditions in the same situation where no one was preadvanced, everyone must go through a live blind first round, and the committee understands that it is our job to fill the position, again, there tends to be vigorous agreement—--even amongst people with varying tastes about who played the best.

All the other points people are making are also so interesting.

I’ve been thinking about this for many years, and I would put forth that the best and most fair way to audition candidates for an orchestral position would be to have a series of blind preliminary auditions, in which every participant must go through—--no pre-advancing nepotism nonsense. Then, the orchestra’s HR team could also incorporate spoken interviews with the final 10 or so candidates to screen for personality issues. There absolutely needs to be a balance of evaluating people on the basis of ability and personality. That’s all important for day to day working together.

The orchestra that I played in that had very strict blind auditions, there was no evaluation for personality for the job. It was an extremely strict blind audition, no one was preadvanced, and we had to choose who sounded best….. Because there was no personality evaluation at the audition, just as others are writing above, there were people in the orchestra who hated each other, they couldn’t get along for decades, didn’t speak for years, etc. An evaluation that combined a true ability test (strict blind audition with no preadvancing) and interviews to screen for personality issues might be a better approach.

I really applaud USA orchestras for using the curtain as much as they are, but much of the time, the results reflect nepotism and not ability, and rooting out nepotism was the whole reason why blind auditions came into existence. Nowadays in the USA, I think that The musicians are gaming the system by preadvancing people. I actually, I don’t think this, I know this. lol.

I’m hoping that everything I’m writing here will end up not applying to the recent ASO audition, and the winning candidate will not be someone connected to the orchestra who started in the finals or semifinals or is one of the orchestra’s favorites who had been subbing with them…. Everyone should have to go through a live blind first round for each audition to truly make it fair competition.

Post Edited (2022-11-30 08:09)

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ATL Symphony Principal Clarinet new

clarinetwoman

2022-10-30 00:23