<p>Hi everyone,
My primary instrument is the piano and I want to pursue a performance major with piano in addition to a major in biomedical engineering. This year, I was in my band's percussion section, but I recently started learning the bassoon and I will be playing it in my school's band senior year. Considering that bassoon is a relatively rare instrument, could it help my chances at being admitted to a school's music program and possibly getting scholarship? I'm worried that although I'm a very accomplished pianist (11+ years, Carnegie hall performances, awards, etc.), there isn't enough demand for pianists at colleges and so scholarship won't be as likely. If I inform the school I am willing to play the bassoon in an ensemble in addition to playing the piano, could this help my chances?
Thanks!</p>
<p>If you are trying to get into a top conservatory, playing a ârareâ instrument is probably even harder than playing a popular one because there are so few spots. If youâre trying to get into a liberal arts program and offer bassoon as one of your ECs, then itâs probably a bonus. </p>
<p>Iâm not trying for a conservatory so hopefully it will be a bonus! I heard that a lot of universities have trouble finding bassoonists to fill spots in their ensembles, so I was hoping it could help me out. Thanks for your response :)</p>
<p>When my son recently went to interview at Peabody, the person he was in the room with said Peabody only gives scholarships to people when they are in âneedâ of that particular instrument. He actually told my son if he played the viola he would be offered a nice scholarship. Having a second instrument is good if you can play it well. </p>
<p>Ugh! Son (viola) should have applied to Peabody this year!! But seriously, how can you know in advance which schools are in need? </p>
<p>Example: last year a violist friend of ours was accepted @ Peabody but with $0 scholarship. He ended up at Jacobs with a Premiere Young Artist award. </p>
<p>I donât think it will make a big differenceâyou will only have been playing bassoon for a year. It wonât hurt, though. I think it is highly unlikely that it will have any impact on your ability to get a scholarship.</p>
<p>I donât think there is a dearth of violists applying to Peabody. Perhaps the reported comment had to do with violinists who can also play viola and thereby fill in when necessary in chamber music situations. </p>
<p>Iâm sure that Glassharmonica would agree when I say, âTake what you hear from others regarding scholarships with more than a grain of saltâ. Other students, parents and even some teachers say things to boost their own egos and to psych others out. You can always go back to the financial aid department and ask for reconsideration- that often works.</p>
<p>Agreed. Unfortunately, sometimes other students or parents do âpsych you outâ by boasting of full scholarships, etc. (Not to imply that Anne1389 was doing thatâshe was simply reporting what she heard.) And sometimes itâs not clear what faculty or others mean when they talk about a âniceâ scholarship or a âgenerousâ talent grant. One personâs idea of âgenerousâ may differ from yours. I say this because it can feel very upsetting when others are bragging of big merit awards and you (or your kid) has received very little. </p>
<p>The other thing to consider when one hears about the size of a merit award is that sometimes it is invisibly connected to the financial need of the applicant. And sometimes the award is larger than it might have been because the institution is trying to match an offer from elsewhere - such as if the institution knows that an applicant has been accepted to Curtis with its automatic full tuition.</p>
<p>A couple of thoughts on the OP, some directly to the question, some in general:</p>
<p>I agree with others, coming in with a year of bassoon under your belt is not likely to help with music school admission, they probably have bassoonists who have been playing it for a lot of years auditioning into performance so it wonât help you. Where playing bassoon might be helpful would be in admission to the general university, if they needed bassoonists for the university orchestra (this is usually not common where there is a music school, but for example the ivies put weight on kids who can play instruments and are willing to play in college, to fill their college orchestra, if they have a music major, then they will prob admit them that way).</p>
<p>Your best bet will be concentrating on your piano skills if you really want to do piano performance, because admissions to the performance degree will depend on your skill on the piano, period, I doubt having a second instrument would weight much, if at all, to getting admitted. If you are planning to get admitted on piano to a program at any kind of level, know that whatever your awards are, whatever you have done, you are going to be competing with other students who are as good or even better than you (the awards, winning concerto competitions, etc, will probably not factor into your music school admission at all, except as it pertains to your level of playing,it could help as an EC with the general college admit). I am not saying you probably arenât good enough, I am saying that the only path to getting an edge on admissions is to get your audition repertoire polished down to the nth degree, because that is what it will require:).</p>
<p>My thought a little off tangent is that I recommend finding out what is required for a performance degree and take a look at what is required for biomed engineering. Performance degrees take a lot of time, whether you are at a university or a conservatory, there is the track of music theory and ear training, plus music history, there are the lessons and chamber music, piano programs also tend to have replacements for orchestra, studio classes, plus there is practicing, which at a college level is going to be very, very demanding. Given that and the workload of an engineering degree, it is going to be pretty hard to try and finish that in 4 years (most people who do that IME go 5 years). Doing music performance is not like doing music in high school, it takes a lot of hours of work to do it, I have heard what people who have never been near music performance say about such programs, that the kids have it easy, that their workload âis nothing like academic studentsâ and I wanted to make sure the OP was aware if they have heard that it isnât trueâŠ:)</p>
<p>Have to agree with musicprnt. At every university I know, there are saxophonists, which means there are musicians who can play bassoon quite well. Many saxophonists learn to âdoubleâ to perform in musicals, meaning they learn all the woodwinds. These students may not be taking bassoon lessons, but if they are needed those saxophonists will bring out their bassoons and play in whichever ensemble needs them, especially if there is some money involved.</p>
<p>If I end up doing a double major I plan on doing 5 years rather than 4. I am still putting my primary focus on the piano, of course, and I am continuing to participate in competitions and festivals. During the summer I normally practice the piano from 3-7 hours a day so I will try to focus this summer on my audition repertoire! However, I really enjoy playing the bassoon and so, even with minimal experience, could I still participate in school ensembles?
Also, can anyone give me some insight on the audition process? I havenât started visiting colleges yet and I donât know how the process works - will I be auditioning in the fall before I apply or after I apply? And does every school require an in-person audition? Sorry, I havenât done much research on this yet so I apologize if I sound totally clueless!</p>
<p>My daughter does perform on bassoon occasionally, when the right opportunity comes around. It will depend entirely on the school you go to. At a conservatory, those positions in the orchestra and wind ensemble are carefully planned, so that every bassoonist gets their equal opportunity to play. At other schools, it may be completely different. I recall that at my university, University of Washington, hundreds of years ago when I went to school, that our wind ensemble had a guy majoring in theater playing on bassoon. Mind you, he was really good, good enough to be a bassoon performance major on scholarship. But I know that various state universities are sometimes short on certain instruments for a concertâmy daughter has been hired twice already to perform some instrument at other universitiesâ wind ensembles when they were short on players.</p>
<p>I would say that if your bassoon experience is minimal, as you say, it would have to be a very large university with multiple orchestras and wind ensembles. A friend of my daughterâs who is a math major at the University of Michigan, and a fairly poor flute player in high school, was able to get into one of the many ensembles there and take lessons as well (he said he has improved a lot!). </p>
<p>If you are willing to play bassoon outside of school, there are community ensembles and musical theater orchestras in need of bassoon players frequently.</p>
<p>The applications come first, NicaBenji. After that the process will vary from school to school. There could be prescreening videos required first, then live, regional or recorded auditions (or even no auditions required for a particular school). It will all make sense once you start the application process.</p>
<p>There is a general flow to the application and audition process, that varies somewhat from school to school:</p>
<p>1)Decide which schools you want to submit applications to (I know, obvious, but even soâŠ). </p>
<p>2)After determining this, make a matrix of the admission requirements from all the schools, and see if you can minimize the total number of pieces you will need to prepare. Some things seem to be standard across all schools (for example, on violin, playing a bach solo sonata or partita), but something you can kill two birds with one stone, so to speak. If School A wants a 20th century piece, and School B wants a solo sonata, a prokofiev solo sonata on violin might serve dual purpose hypotheticallyâŠthe idea is you want to prepare as few pieces as possible that meets the needs of all the audition programs. I would recommend working on these pieces on the assumption you will be auditioning at all those programs, rather than waiting for notice to audition come through in December and scrambling to get pieces done that arenât polished. </p>
<p>3)You send an application to the school in question. For Piano and violin these days a lot of the programs require a pre screen video (and I believe it is getting to be common for most instruments).It is important to know if a school requires a pre screen, because that means you will need to submit it in the fall, usually by December 1stâŠwhich means more than likely (on piano) you would need to have your audition rep polished by the fall, by October or november at the outside, and recorded (or at least the portion they want on the pre screen; schoolâs websites will list this). </p>
<p>Curtis FYI doesnât do prescreens as far as I know, they have multiple rounds of auditions.</p>
<p>4)Once you have submitted the pre screen video and application, you then wait to hear if you are invited to audition (for schools without pre screen, I assume then it is just waiting to hear about an audition date</p>
<p>5)You will get an audition date and time from each school, and you will need to chart that out to make sure that a)you donât have a conflict with any two dates (i.e one school is in LA on February 20th at 2pm and another school in NY is that same day at 5pmâŠ:)> Also, there can be conflicts with other events in your life, and it is important to straighten these out as early as possible.</p>
<p>6)The audition themselves have been described ad nauseum on here, but in general you will be playing for as few as one person up until a multi person panel (depends on the size of the school, how big a faculty), Depending on the panel, they either will tell you what they want you to play, or they will ask you what you are prepared to start off with, it all depends on the school</p>
<p>Usually, they will ask for specific sections of the pieces in question, and will stop you when they have heard enough, it is extremely unlikely you will be asked to play an entire movement or especially an entire piece. There are always certain things that they likely are not going to ask for, depends on the instrument (for example, on violin it is pretty rare IME to hear of kids being asked for scales or etudes). You have to assume they will ask for everything, but if you search old threads on here about piano, I would bet there are things on piano they rarely ask for:). </p>
<p>7)An important note on the audition process, donât try and take more out of it other than the fact that you did it and survived. The duration of the audition doesnât tell you anything, for example, I have seen kids audition for 6 minutes and get in, another kid plays for 20 and gets rejectedâŠlikewise, despite some of the BS I have heard out there, a panel being friendly or cold to you, a teacher on the panel smiling or frowning, talking to you or not, may not mean anything (it might, but there is no way to âreadâ a panel). Yeah, I have read all the things people claim, how a panel member hearing someone play cried, or told the person they were the next Heifetz, that if they donât talk to you it means you donât have a chance, etc, and it is mostly crap in all honesty. Talk to teachers who serve on audition panels, and they will tell you often it is an endurance contest they hope to survive, and often they are tired, hungry, need to use the facilities, etc, and have heard a lot of kids, dealt with some with parents from hell, you name itâŠso you canât take anything out of it. </p>
<p>Also, though I fully expect you will ignore it, donât drive yourself nuts agonizing over how you did, among other things, you will likely have other auditions to deal with, so agonizing over the ones you have done wonât help you. Keep in mind you may think you had a terrible audition, and the panel liked it, you might think that any little slip is going to kill you, it may not, again like other aspects, your own idea of your playing may bear no reality to what the panel heard, you probably are going to be a lot more self critical than they might be, they make allowances for nerves, for other distractions, things you might not realize (and yes, you can have a whiz bang audition, and think you did great, and get rejectedâŠ).</p>
<p>8)When the results come out, try not to take them too personally or beat yourself up too much, because there is nothing scientific about this. You could see a kid you routinely beat in competitions get in and you get rejected, you can see kids get in you have heard play and not understand it, there is a lot of things associated with auditions that will not make sense, which is not surprising, because they are not rational. They involve subjective evaluations, there can be other factors as to why someone gets in and you donât, you have to take it simply that it worked against you. Obviously, if you applied to X schools and didnât get into any of them, it might be a sign of real weaknesses in your playing, it is why it is important to have benchmarks on your playing before you get to audition season, to clean those up.</p>
<p>Then, of course, the agony of where to actually go:).</p>
<p>
Well, it depends on how many other bassoonists happen to be there. At someplace like Yale, there are usually a number of very good undergraduate bassoon players, although they may not be music majors. But any bassoon player would find opportunities to playâbut perhaps not in the orchestra or concert band.</p>