<p>My son, who is finishing his junior year in high school, did the vocal program at BUTI last summer and adored every last second of it. It may well have been "the best summer" he has ever had. If he is lucky enough to be accepted to the program again as well as Interlochen Vocal Soloist, which should he do? (He did Interlochen as a younger boy in musical theater. It was at Interlochen, which he also loved, that he discovered his passion for opera and classical voice.) He has also applied to Washington National Opera and Bel Canto Institute in Florence. He has just been accepted to Bel Canto. Knowledgeable advice would be greatly appreciated. He will most likely apply next year to either a join BM and BA program or to one of the Ivies. Working this summer on repertoire for an audition tape will be important.</p>
<p>My daughter completed the Interlochen Vocal Soloist Studies program after her freshman year of high school, and BUTI after sophomore and junior years. Both programs are fabulous yet different. Your son will probably not have an opportunity to work on college repertoire for his college audition pre-screen tape or auditions at BUTI - we were hoping that would be the case last summer since our daughter had same voice teacher as the summer before and we were very clear about our wish that she come out with a piece or two that would be appropriate for college auditions. We were told that the purpose of BUTI is not to provide college audition repertoire, but to develop technique and repertoire is chosen for the vocalist after preliminary re-auditions based on that alone. The pieces my daughter worked on at BUTI last summer didn’t even really fit the various conservatory pre-screening requirements. It all worked out fine, though, as we discovered it was better to have one voice teacher/coach giving input on the complete pre-screening repertoire selection to ensure it was well-rounded. I can’t speak to Interlochen’s policy with college repertoire piece work in the VSS program. My daughter loved both programs!</p>
<p>Thank you so much for this extremely thoughtful response. Best of luck to your daughter!</p>