auditions

this past weekend was all state audition weekend. it's one of the most nerve wracking weekends of your life, your fate in left in the hands of judges who hear you play for 5 minutes tops. after that short incriment of time they decided who is apparentley the best of the best and select them to get a coveted spot in the prestigious all state band.

thousands of kids across the state have been practicing the same etudes over and over since the first of august until the third weekend in october. this sure seems like a lot of time to learn two or three one, or one and a part, page pieces and get your thirteen major scales up to tempo, 88 beats per minutes scales played in a sixteenth note pattern (which is four notes per beat), but in reality the time just flies by. these etudes and played over and over and over and not only are they engrained in their heads, but in the heads of all their family members.

you have to be perfect for these auditions just to get a call back and then you have to play impeccably to make it. i'm not perfect. which means no call back for me. i may have been happy with my audition but it wasn't perfect. i could still just hope that maybe, just maybe, when they put that sheet of paper up on the wall my name would be on it. it wasn't. over fifty flutes auditioned in the northeast iowa audition center. can you guess how many were selected? five. just five. one tenth of the auditioners were selected.

phenomenal players auditioned on saturday and did not make all state. it is entirely possible for them to have made it the previous year and then not even get a call back the next. it all depends on how you act under the pressure of these auditions. people stand outside the door and listen, silently critiquing your perfomance mentally comparing themselves to you. everyone may be wishing you good luck as you enter the room but it's in the back of their minds that they don't want you to do well, they want themselves to do well. the worst feeling ever is walking out of that room knowing that you have played better than you just did but that doesn't matter because all the judge knows is how you played just then.

after three years of auditioning i have not gotten a call back. every year i hear the same, "there's always next year."