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Lurking in the archive are two posts from my original HTML blog that remain very timely. Written in a period when I heard a lot of auditions, these are the insider thoughts of a judge. This post is dated 3/18/05 and there will be a follow-up post on Saturday.
I have had an extremely busy spring break. Today I am playing the “Three American Tenors” show, yesterday I rehearsed the Schoenberg Chamber Symphony for a performance next week and got my new Paxman compensating triple horn (more on that in a future post), the day before that I played the Josh Groban arena show (along with “the horndog” Bruce Hembd–looking out at 30,000 faces is always impressive), the three days before that I was in Kansas City visiting my dad who is having chemotherapy, and on Sunday I played a concert of Latin music with the Salt River Brass Band and guest soloists Dos Amigos. Whew! But kicking off the break for me was judging All-State auditions here in Phoenix.
In judging anything like this you are first of all not expecting to hear perfection but you are hoping for excellence. With that in mind, as I judged I made a list of notes which I will leave in the random order which I originally put them down in. These items will help any horn player to ponder but will especially be of use to the advanced high school player.
First, a quick positive item; tuning was not that bad on the whole. A few players did however have their horns way out of balance, sharp on the B-flat horn. I have more on this in my site at tuning your double horn. [UPDATE: That article is no longer online, but my updated version of this may be found in my warmup publication].
Noisy Valves. There is no damage you can do to your horn by oiling the valves; be sure to get oil on the top and bottom bearings and fix this simple but annoying problem. Part of the issue is, of course, we get used to how our horn sounds so we “tune out” the clanks. But judges can’t.
Scales. Know your scales!! We started with scales and they were not meant to surprise anyone. These are foundational and should be “old friends” for you. Have them worked out to a high default mode!
The “Easy” Selection. One interesting phenomena was that some of the best players stumbled the most in the selection that was the easiest of all the selections they had to prepare. Don’t get so hung up on the hard ones that the easy ones are under prepared.
“Play a Couple Notes.” This is something we asked of every audition as the student came in but actually it is a part of the audition in a sense as well. Make sure you play a few easy, mid-range notes that are comfortable and good sounding. Don’t play uncomfortable, odd stuff and don’t play more than a few notes either. More below.
Too Covered. A number of the players we heard must not take lessons with a horn playing teacher. Opinions vary as to what is an appropriate amount of covering with the right hand but by any standard several players were vastly too covered, hopefully from an outlying region but I have no way to know. This also brings up the point of studying with a horn playing teacher. This is the sort of thing that would be sorted out in literally the first five minutes of a lesson with almost any horn teacher.
Rhythm. It has to be right!! Don’t be lazy on this. It is easy to chip a few notes and judges can forgive this kind of error but you won’t just happen to “chip” a rhythm, it shows that you are just not well prepared.
Sing! Make a good sound and make some phrases. Don’t get harsh or blare away sound wise but do make phrases with peaks and valleys of dynamics that sound like a fine singer making phrases. Don’t be bland/dull/colorless.
The First Note. This is sort of a side note to the “play a couple notes” item above. Play a solid first note with a centered, good sound. This sets the tone for everything to follow. You should have warmed up somewhere earlier; these first notes are mainly to just get settled and quickly adjust to the room.
On the whole I enjoyed what I heard, and the other judge was very positive that the overall level of horn playing was higher this year in Arizona than it was when he judged last year. Hopefully my students are making a positive impact on horn playing in this area and will continue to for many years.
Of course, some players were weaker than others. One in particular stood out to me as the sight-reading was among the best we heard but the prepared works were among the worst. I suspect that person probably has a good natural ability for horn playing but does not put in much effort to practice. A bit of a shame, really.
Besides noting the various points above, I would finally answer my original question of how to make all-state with the need to practice, working with a horn playing teacher, and a little hard work. But also be aware of all you do in the audition room and don’t fall into any of the above traps. Good luck!
