<p>My son, a cellist, will be applying to music schools in the fall (2013), some of which require a pre-screen taped audition. He has several good choices of summer camps, which he has greatly enjoyed in the past and benefited from. Choices are: 1) prestigious 6-week mostly orchestral camp, with some chamber work and some lessons; 2) another 6-week orchestral camp with a little more to offer in the way of lessons and solo performance opportunities; and 3) a new but promising 4-week camp with good faculty that focuses mostly on individual and chamber work. Son is a sucker for big names, so is leaning toward choice #1. My gut feeling is that #3 would probably serve him best in getting ready to make the prescreen recording and in preparing for auditions. But perhaps I am needlessly worrying... Ultimately, it is his decision, but I am wondering if choice #1 will allow him enough time to practice. He has already picked out most of his audition repertoire and has a decent start on it.</p>
<p>Are Interlochen and BUTI among those? It’s almost impossible to make any distinction with the tiny amount of information you’ve given us.</p>
<p>I did a 6-week program the summer before senior year. I am a vocalist, so this wasn’t as huge of a deal for me, but most of the friends I made over the summer were instrumentalists. My friends have been accepted to schools like Eastman, Northwestern, and Michigan, and have auditioned at schools including Juilliard and Curtis. I think it is fair to say that these kids did just fine as far as practicing enough to be successful for prescreens and auditions goes! I had a couple friends that would spend almost all of their free time practicing. At programs like this, your time is what you make of it. Bottom line – your son will probably have time to practice, and he can work on his audition pieces with his private teacher. Best of luck to you and your son!</p>
<p>My D, a senior, is a cellist and will be attending conservatory in the fall 2013. Don’t know where yet because the decisions are coming in fast now. Nevertheless, for the past 3 summers she has attended an intensive month-long cello only camp concentrating on performance and theory. There is also a cello choir ensemble that they play in. It is selectively a small group (around 12 kids) and designed to be so. The instruction is excellent. Last summer was entirely spent on preparing her audition materials: etudes, scales, rep. Therefore she had her tapes done early in the process. This took lots of pressure off her in her senior year with everything else she had going on. PM me if you want more info. Remember, don’t underestimate the importance the prescreen.</p>
<p>I would recommend going where the lessons are good and performance opportunities abundant!</p>
<p>Having just done through this with my son (and waiting for news on several programs <em>grrr</em>), I think the answer depends on your kid and where he is. Some students have their audition rep almost ready by this point or by the time summer starts, and will be fine if their individual practicing is curtailed by a summer program, others may still be fine tuning it and need to have lessons and intensive practice. If a summer program has a high level teacher giving lessons and the requirements of the performance allow time to practice (some programs IME are really tiring, they keep the kids going from morning until night, and by end of day they are shot, that may not be a good thing if the kid needs to get up to speed). </p>
<p>It is true that pre screens are not the main auditions and may not be nearly as rigorous as the live audition, but you never know that, and for example, a particular program may be innundated with pre screens for cello, and have a ton of really, really great pre screens, and something that might have gotten through in past years fails this one, you just don’t know, or they may decide instead of auditioning 60, they are only going to audition 40 that year…with that in mind, I recommend treating the pre screen as strongly as the audition, and make plans with that in mind, treat it as is the fall deadline was the live audition. If in doubt, err on the side of caution, and maximize the time you need to work on your audition rep, with practicing and lessons. Chamber and orchestra are wonderful things, and are the lifeblood of many musicians, but for many instruments it almost doesn’t matter in terms of the audition (instruments like brass and woodwinds use orchestras excerpts, something violin and cello, at least the large majority of conservatories, don’t, and it if the pieces played in a summer program aren’t on the audition list, well, then even that may not be that helpful). , and if you need to err, err on the side of getting the rep ready for the pre screen…</p>
<p>Thank you for the replies so far. It is very helpful to hear other perspectives. Last year he attended Aspen, which he loved. It looks like he will be going with BUTI this year. We just returned from a spring break tour of colleges, and he had several lessons. We heard that this was an extremely strong year for cellos, for those of you who applied this year. We intend to treat the prescreen very seriously. Son has lots of confidence and needs to be reminded of the level of competition out there. He received encouraging feedback from teachers, but it is hard to judge his level out here where there are fewer cellists and programs. The national-level camps have helped some with that, and they always inspire him to practice more. He is very strong academically and is looking at dual degree programs, but his musical interests are wide-ranging (he loves theory, composition, and conducting as well…).</p>