<p>lastbird, did not reply at first because of my difficulty understanding what kind of things with deadlines the teacher was late in signing your daughter up for, (could be competition or music festival, perhaps?) As a parent of a college freshman who went through piano auditions last year, I wanted to mention something that others have not touched upon, which does have to do with awareness of time and deadlines. That is the ability of a piano teacher to work with the student in choosing and mastering the audition repertoire by time of the prescreening recording and audition deadlines.</p>
<p>When my child was in 10th grade, having been with a wonderful teacher since first grade, we came to the sad realization that someone new was needed who would be able to oversee the whole process of learning the repertoire and getting ready for auditions as well as be a great teacher. I believe this requires a particular focus and planning ability to help the student get everything ready and polished but not stale by the time of the taping/auditions. I should add that the second teacher turned out to be much more demanding and “tough” than the first teacher, perhaps with the deadlines in mind, yet at the same time was warm and had a great sense of humor. This turned out to be a great choice of teacher at the right time. </p>
<p>Anyway, for piano, even if the actual audition ends up being 10 - 15 mins, the amount of music required to be learned/memorized is often quite large. My child started working on the audition repertoire no later than beginning of 11th grade. So while it is easy yet annoying to nag someone to get a letter of recommendation out, one has to be able to trust that the teacher is attending (over an extended period of time) to the process of helping the student prepare for the auditions. I see now that there probably are many excellent piano teachers who would not necessarily be great at or even feel comfortable with the prospect of working with a student who is planning to do college auditions. I think the first teacher was relatively laid back and not really used to this since most of that teacher’s students were not headed for college auditions to major in music. </p>
<p>Anyway, I just wanted to mention that there is a lot of organization/time management/attention to detail and strategic planning beyond the actual teaching involved in helping a student learn the piano repertoire for college auditions, and it is important that the teacher is accustomed to and comfortable with that kind of added responsibility. </p>
<p>By the way it happened that neither of these two great but very different teachers encouraged involvement in competitions (they both found it distasteful for piano to be treated as a sport) but both encouraged participation in music festivals and summer programs.</p>