<p>My son had his first real audition yesterday (he is 13), for a high school program, and it was absolutely overwhelming, stressful and intense. For me! I wonder if anyone could provide any insight into ways for the process to be less stressful for him, and also answer two questions. First, on his second instrument he was asked to re-play something louder, and, also on the second instrument, the judges asked him to stop the second piece in about the middle, saying they had heard enough. He was able to play the entire (long) first piece. Is this is negative as it seems to me?</p>
<p>It’s natural to worry about these things, and to read them negatively, but relax! He’s only 13, so this will hopefully be good experience for him (and you!), rather than being a life-changing audition.</p>
<p>Being asked to play something in a different way is not necessarily negative - it means they’re interested, and want to see what he can do. They might also be looking for his willingness and ability to adapt to different teacher’s/conductor’s demands.</p>
<p>Cutting him off in the 2nd piece is also not a cause for concern, it really does just mean that they’ve heard enough to make a fair decision.</p>
<p>I had an important competition once where I played the entire program from memory, and spent most of my energy glaring at one member of the panel who was reading a book the whole time! I left the audition furious and burst into tears… I ended up winning that round of the competition.</p>
<p>Good luck!</p>
<p>Thank you so much for taking the time to answer me! It is very much appreciated. This is our first musician and we are so far beyond clueless that we may never get there. It’s hard to have a send of how good he is because we have no idea what to look for.</p>
<p>That’s a great story about the panel member reading a book! The panel yesterday seemed to be writing a book on the evaluation sheet. This was the first time he’s played in front of a panel and the room was huuuuuuge and empty.</p>
<p>I agree with Fishee. Often during auditions, and during competitions, judges do not intend to hear complete pieces, and tell the competitor to stop when they’ve heard enough. Also, the more he practices auditions, the better he’ll get at them and feel less stress.</p>
<p>When D3 was auditioning, she overheard another student telling a parent that one person on the panel asked him to play it again louder while a second person asked him at the same time to play it more quietly. Then they started arguing with one another, leaving the poor auditioner standing there awkwardly waiting for a final decision!</p>
<p>Lol, stradmom. And zoosermom, you really can’t read anything into the behavior of the audition panel. They can be rude to the point of hostility and you can still win/ be accepted. Being cut off before finishing your piece means nothing, nor does a long or short audition. The one thing that does seem to help is not being one of the last to play before lunch, as apparently low blood sugar on the part of the judges leads to low scores for the applicant.</p>
<p>You just never know exactly what to expect! At one of D’s college auditions, she sang one of her pieces and out of the darkened hall came the voice of one of the panel members- very well known in the field- asking her if “(She, D) wrote the piece because it wasn’t familiar”! D kept a cool head while she politely explained the history of the work, which was from the Baroque period- it’s always good to know about what you’re performing- but had a good laugh with her accompanist afterwards!</p>
<p>As others have said, what goes on in the audition and the outcome often don’t relate to each other. People have auditioned for top level programs and gotten cut off after 4 minutes and gotten in, others have been asked to play almost the full time and didn’t…and yep, panelists can seem to be hostile, if it is before lunch or dinner they might spend your audition talking about where to get dinner. One audition story I know of the auditionee said what the piece they were playing was, and one of the panel members said “Eh, what did he say”…and the person spoke in a normal voice, apparently the panel member was quite a bit older and hard of hearing (how’s that for making you nervous?).</p>
<p>In terms of knowing how good your child is, that is a tough one. Depending on the instrument and the competition, competitions may mean little, some of the music group competitions are known to be flaky, my child went into one of them playing a bach solo partita they had used on an audition to get into a very competitive program the week before, and the feedback they got from the panel (composed of high school public string teachers) was that the way he played it was dead wrong for bach (and yes, they got into the competitive program, and word was the playing of the Bach strongly influenced them getting in:). It especially can be hard if you live in an area where there isn’t necessarily strong youth instrumentalists, it can be hard to know, the old big fish in a small sea kind of thing. One way to find out is to get an evaluation, find a well known teacher, maybe a teacher at a college music program, teacher known for producing kids who go on to top music schools, and ask for an evaluation. One word of warning is that in the case of the big fish in the small sea, where everyone is telling you how good the kid is, etc, that it may or may not reflect someone who has reached a high level. Having gone through that stage, we were shocked at the difference between a good local player and what was going on at higher levels, it was night and day. Put it this way, we thought our child was really up there, and after his first lesson with his current teacher, well, it was kind of like finding that perfect house and then a home inspector telling you the wiring is half gone, Squirrels took out part of the roof and termites had had a field day on it…:)</p>
<p>I actually don’t understand why many areas of music are negative. At the top conservatories in the US, there are well-known teachers who scream at their students. At two of the well-known summer music institutes my daughter has attended, she was yelled at by instructors, to the point where she thought of quitting. </p>
<p>This past weekend my daughter had her first opportunity to perform a sonata at a “Carnegie Hall” type of music center, as a result of winning a competition. During the sound check (there were already about 500 people in the hall, out of the eventual 2000 who attended), the director of the competition came up to my daughter on stage and yelled at her for using a music stand. When my daughter reminded her that memorization was not required in this competition, the director stuck her tongue out at my daughter. It was an overwhelming event to begin with for my daughter, plus she had to deal with this incredibly rude director (who was just as bad during the auditions and yelled at everyone).</p>
<p>We have been telling the original poster that the negativity of judges doesn’t usually have anything to do with the outcome. But really, I wonder why we put up with it in this day and age?</p>
<p>This is a really, really interesting thread for me. He is really just starting out and doesn’t know what his future plans are, but this high school would be perfect for him, so we are praying for admission. He tends to be a very gentle soul, so I’ve learned a lot in this thread that I can pass along to him to help him prepare. Thank you very, very much.</p>
<p>Surround your son with people who will challenge him and nurture him at the same time. Go visit and talk with the teachers in the music department at the high school. Attend their concerts - see if it is really the best place for him. </p>
<p>At some point, kids do need to know that some people are mean and hostile, but I tried to keep mine away from these types (some sports coaches also fall into this category) as long as possible. Or at least until your son is old enough to understand that some people are just like that and sometimes you have to deal with them.</p>
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I think it is (but I’m not a musician). His private teacher, whom we love and trust implicitly, urges us to send him there, and in the information gathering period we learned that this school is totally on board with helping him pursue his slightly unusual interest and even has an older kid who studies at MSM in the same niche area. The other two schools will absolutely not consider the possibility. It’s jazz clarinet, by the way, and the other two schools say that there is no place in jazz for clarinet. The third school gave my son a great chat about his idol, Benny Goodman.</p>
<p>zoosermom-</p>
<p>I can’t believe someone would say something like “clarinet has no part in Jazz”, I really would wonder about a school that said something like that, it is like saying flute has no part of jazz, etc…either it is someone who thinks a jazz combo is piano, bass and sax or something, but holy cow…if you ever get that, tell the $&#&#* idiots to watch Ken Burn’s series “Jazz” before opening their mouths… amazing to hear that kind of thinking in jazz, which is a way of playing music, it was designed to be played by almost anything (and tell them to look up recordings featuring Sidney Bechet)…</p>
<p>Think of the image of conductors, and what often comes across? Tyrants and worse (well, at least some of them, not all are, obviously). Music is full of tales of the great conductors screaming at orchestras, throwing things, etc (Janos Starker has a great story about that, when he resigned from the Chicago Symphony to pursue a solo cello career, Fritz Reiner, the great conductor, kept glaring at him the whole rehearsal and eventually was so angry he broke his baton in two…the musicians as a parting gift gave him a pair of cufflinks, in the form of two halves of a broken baton…). </p>
<p>Teachers are notorious for it, in the violin world they are legendary, and I have sat in master classes with some top performers who literally had students in tears (sometimes quite honestly, the student deserved it, but not always). Stories abound about people like Galamian; Nathan Millstein tells a story about Leopold Auer, he and heifetz were in a group class, and heifetz was playing I believe some piece (I think Wieznawski, apologies for my spelling), they were like 11 or 12, and Auer got so mad at the way Heifetz was playing and threw a chair at him that hit the wall and broke, and Millstein said he peed his pants he was so scared, especially since he was next playing the same piece…</p>
<p>This isn’t a myth, unfortunately, and it is due to the nature of music itself I believe. First of all, the relationship between a teacher and student is kind of like a master/apprentice, especially when you get to the high levels, and with a talented teacher the student is depending on them for their future. If the teacher is effectively teaching the student, the problem is it isn’t all that easy to find another teacher that could work as well or better (obviously, it can be done, but it isn’t easy), and believe me, the teachers know this, and the parents and students put up with the abusive elements because it is so hard. Plus as has been mentioned with changing teachers, music is a small world, and there is the very real fear that the ex-teacher could put out bad word about the student, and it isn’t totally irrational, because music is a very small world. </p>
<p>The other thing I suspect is because of the difficulty of the music world and the fact that many toil in obscurity when you have someone (like the director of the program someone mentioned) who gets a little bit of power, some have a tendency to throw it around, and not in a nice way. </p>
<p>Plus of course there is the ‘artistic temperament’, there are some who argue that musical genius often seems to come along with emotional quirks (the old genius is on the same edge as insanity I suppose <em>lol</em>), often the excuse for abusive behavior is ‘they are artists, after all’. Add to that that many of the teachers might have had teachers who themselves were petty tyrants, and I think that is part of it, too, I wonder if they absorbed the fact that being a demanding teacher meant being an S*B. The common complaints are when it stretches beyond being a criticism of their playing and getting personal, yelling at them, telling them they are stupid or lazy or whatever, and that is over the line, but students put up with it. There are cultures where such denigration is part of it, for example, telling a child “your fat” or so forth as inducement to do better, so it isn’t surprising that it comes into lessons. </p>
<p>And again, when push comes to shove, if a teacher is effective the dilema is finding someone better, you don’t just go in the yellow pages and look for a high level teacher, and because learning is so individualized, it is very difficult to find someone good or better; you can find a lot of mediocre teachers, or ones who are talented but work well only with some students, but to find right ones is difficult. And yes, it is hard on the students, I have seen students after lessons for some teachers reputed to be difficult come out looking like they just fought WWII single handedly, stories of tears and even fainting…</p>
<p>There is the opposite extreme as well, that is the ‘nice’ teacher, there are teachers who are all so nice with their students, always encouraging, never say anything strong, and quite frankly their students reflect this, they haven’t been challenged and don’t play well as a result. The ideal teacher is tough on the student but doesn’t make it personal, can criticize the playing and drive the kid higher without turning it into character assassination or personal attacks…</p>
<p>Since your kid is interested in jazz, I would strongly suggest that when he is a little older you consider sending him to the Berklee 5 week summer program. It attracts all kind of talent from around the world. If you happen to be local to Bsoton, they also hae week long summer programs that are suitable for kids who are younger. </p>
<p>My son did the “bass lines” program when he was 14, and did the 5 week last year. The 5 week was very eye opening for him, and he also improved a lot in his playing.</p>
<p>One other suggestion, if you live in the NYC area try the MSM pre college jazz program, I have seen their kids playing, it is fantastic. I don’t know the school you are sending your S to, but MSM is a saturday pre college program and they have incredible students.</p>
<p>Very well said, musicprnt. I have a pet theory that youth orchestra conductors can be among the very worst of the petty tyrants (with exceptions of course.) I have been shocked at some of the abusive behavior I’ve witnessed and heard described-- yet parents and students are afraid of complaining because, as you point out, the music world is small and the politics can be poisonous. My kids have reported (this was a few years ago, as they have moved on to college) chairs and sandwiches thrown at student musicians during rehearsals by frustrated coaches. Where else do we see behavior like that, abusive behavior that goes unchecked? Oh right: in the sports world. </p>
<p>(My kids have also had wonderfully thoughtful, generous, kind, supportive teachers, coaches, and conductors.)</p>
<p>My daughter also loves jazz clarinet! She isn’t a clarinetist per se, but she does play it when she does pit orchestra jobs. She really likes Arte Shaw’s jazz clarinet concerto and has actually worked on it alot.</p>
<p>Conservatories are a “conservative” lot, so many of them will say you can’t study jazz clarinet. A number of them don’t offer classical sax programs either.</p>
<p>In fact this attitude has something to do with how my daughter was treated at her performance last weekend that I described in an earlier post. She performed a “classical” sax piece (although very contemporary) and the director probably doesn’t think that saxophone is a real instrument.</p>
<p>If your son gets in, great, and if he doesn’t, there are a lot of options for study in the high school years. So maybe assure him of that.</p>
<p>And there are many ways to be involved in music, over the years. I am not saying this to suggest opting out of a high stress route, only that many musicians are more entrepreneurial these days and if you want to make music, you can find a way.</p>
<p>One esteemed conservatory is well-known for trying to break the will of auditioners for undergrad programs. There is a book about the institution that includes a teacher throwing things at students, possibly, as I remember, an actual music stand. Also fellow students sabotaged each other and had physical fights over practice space. It takes all kinds.</p>
<p>The only other comment I would make is from a parenting point of view. Your son is just starting out, so it is a good thing to think about how you want to be involved, emotionally, in his music. It is difficult when you care about your kid. I will say that for my dancer daughter, I stopped going into studios or talking to teachers around late middle school. There were times I had to, but overall, I tried to stay out of things. I think the expectations are different for parents of adolescents in music, since this daughter was mainly dancing with people much older. But overall, I am just commenting on the emotional discipline we need to handle the stress of kids under stress in the arts world. it’s hard to balance support and detachment, but over the years, as they get older, it gets easier.</p>
<p>I remember one time my daughter auditioned, in early middle school, for Junior District in clarinet. She got her score, which was one point below the score for getting in. The judge told her that since she was young, he wanted to score her that way to encourage her to work hard. I was so happy for her: she came out very excited and told me that she had “come close to making it.” It could have been very different :)</p>
<p>This is all great advice, information and insight. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it!</p>
<p>Compmom, I generally don’t get that involved, but seeing as how he is just 13 I think he needs parental input in choosing a high school because more than music is at stake. I fell a little sorry for him because my husband and I have no musical experience at all.</p>