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This past weekend several times I encouraged current or former students to make a recording for an upcoming audition. The specific job it is for gives me a unique opportunity to say why you should make the audition recording, as it is for my old job as Third Horn in the Nashville Symphony, a position I held from 1991-98.
While I know I was invited to auditions based on tapes (they were tapes then!) several times, the specific perspective I would offer is I was also on a committee for another position in Nashville that had a tape round, and I believe the current process will be run in a similar manner, as the underlying contract language must be similar if not the same. In my experience it was all done “by the book.”
The assessment of the recordings was done by the full committee together in a conference room. We came up with a duration that we listened to of every tape, probably one or two minutes. At that time my recollection is we took a quick vote to see if the person was a yes, a no, or a maybe to listen further. A number were clearly a “no” at that point, the first tip being,
- Make sure the first minute is perfect and says exactly what you want to say in every way.
After that, if it was a yes or maybe we listened to the rest of the tape in full and voted again. If it was still a yes they were invited. If it was still a maybe at the end of that we turned to their resume, which we did not reference before this point. If the resume was basically strong we invited them still, and if not the maybe turned into a no. The second tip being,
- Make sure your recording is good enough to be invited before you send it in.
Get feedback from mentors and be honest with yourself. You need to show perfect rhythm, pitch, style, and careful attention to detail. And, to be very serious, if you can’t lay down what they request perfectly with no edits in any take you really are not good enough to be applying for that job anyway. The bar is high.
The encouraging thing to close with is that in the audition referenced in this article the winner of the audition was invited based on their tape. Their resume showed little professional experience, but the tape was first class and they clearly won the job in the audition itself. That can be your story too, but the first step is to make the great recording.
To note one other useful point, for any kind of recorded audition (summer festivals, schools, etc.) you need to be thinking this same way. The first minute has to be perfect and the rest has to be great. Assessment of a recorded audition is of necessity very harsh. We have to assume it is your very best playing, and if you miss two notes in the first minute we have to think normally you miss even more than that. Keep that in mind as you make any recorded audition.
As the above is in effect a bonus article for my older Orchestra 101 series, see this article for my book on the topic.
