Archived under: Horn study, Inspiration & The Big Picture, Performance & Playing
Juries are Solo Performances
Every accredited music school is required by NASM to have performance exams of some sort, and brass juries start for us at ASU on Thursday. Among students in general I think the tendency is to treat juries as simply something you have to do. One thought I have tried to leave with the horn studio this year is to really think of these as solo performances.
I have attended and taught at smaller schools. At many of these institutions juries do just border on something you have to do. They may be in a faculty office or a classroom; they may consist of scales and etudes. In contrast, at Eastman they were quite the deal when I was a student there. They were once a year and were held for brass on the stage of Eastman theatre! At ASU juries are in a recital hall in front of a panel of the brass faculty, and most students perform solos with piano.
The background of the teachers doing the grading is an element to consider. I would say that a percentage of studio brass teachers at colleges are more interested in the solo literature than the orchestral literature. If you take brass playing as a general topic many of the big name players are primarily soloists and chamber musicians. Their equipment and overall playing setup is geared toward solo playing.
Where this brings us back to the horn is I always ask students what their primary goals are in terms of performing. Virtually every advanced student I have encountered has had among their strongest interests orchestral playing. Student goals are important; the goal of teaching students to play orchestral literature well underlies much of my teaching.
While I have done a lot of chamber music and have recorded two great solo CDs, in terms of horn playing I always have been more interested in orchestral playing than anything else. The key item is however that I can get into a solo playing groove and do it very convincingly, and it is a groove we all must learn as a part of our training and display well in a jury or recital.
The jury is a solo performance. Approach it with the mindset of being a soloist giving a great recital, not as a student playing a test.
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