<p>Hello, I'm a sophomore oboe in high school. I am planning on pursuing a conservatory education and have a question about auditions. Is it too early for me to start some of the more difficult pieces for college auditions? like mozarts oboe quartet for curtis, and some of the colburn music.</p>
<p>thanks.</p>
<p>From my own experience, it’s never a bad idea to learn a piece and then come back to it later. I’m a violinist, and I learned the Bach g minor solo sonata as a freshman/sophomore. I re-learned it this year for auditions, and having the framework there really helped!</p>
<p>Those decisions are best done in consultation with your private instructor who knows your current technical ability, strengths and weaknesses.</p>
<p>Definitely speak with your teacher. Some teachers like to get an early start on college audition material, and others prefer to put it off until you have worked up to a higher level of technical ability. If you have any ideas about any other schools to which you would like to apply, this would be a good time to dig into the details on their web sites and make a list of what is needed for auditions at each school. That list may be very helpful when speaking with your teacher.</p>
<p>Thanks for all of the advice. I will bring it up with my teacher soon.</p>
<p>As an oboist planning to major in music performance next year at Syracuse University, I don’t know about preparing for a conservatory style audition. However, I don’t necessarily recommend starting it as early as sophomore year.</p>
<p>My style changed and expanded so greatly between my sophomore and senior years that there’s no way I could have fully learned my music in that span. Once you learn it one way, it’s so hard to learn it even better–surely you know that. You may learn so much in that time that you don’t even want to play that piece anymore, and you’ve lost some effort.</p>
<p>I didn’t start my audition music until the summer going into my senior year, and three weeks before my auditions practiced ridiculously much and had three lessons a week with three different teachers for a month. I got into both Syracuse with a half scholarship and Denver with a half scholarship (which has a very conservatory-style music school) with that amount of work. I don’t think I would have done as well if I had started years before. Months before? Maybe. Probably.</p>
<p>A good friend of mine auditioned at Julliard, Eastman, schools like that–and he didn’t start his music until the end of his junior year. He is a phenomenal clarinet player and I wouldn’t put it past him to be accepted to those schools.</p>
<p>HOWEVER, that is just my opinion.</p>
<p>Whether or not you decide to start that early, I stongly recommend playing the oboe Mozart Concerto in C, and depending on where you decide to audition and their requirements, at least learn the first movement. The music is complex and professors will be impressed if you can interpret Mozart’s style correctly. Half of that you may already know, but hey, it doesn’t help to confirm.</p>
<p>It is certainly not too early to develop a repertoire plan for the next 2.5 years. That plan may change many times, but will still be useful. Ideally you should be playing repertoire at or very close to the level that will be required for your college auditions. After all, you will be recording for prescreens in about 1.5 years (which means you will begin working on that repertoire no later than about a year from now). </p>
<p>As others mention, when you begin the audition repertoire is a decision best made by your teacher. Some teachers prefer to start the repertoire very early and give it some time to rest before coming back to it. Works which have sat with you for a while are often easier to perform consistently well. Some teachers may subscribe to the previous poster’s (jnpearson85’s) belief that learning the repertoire in the next few months will make it difficult “to learn it even better” a year from now. </p>
<p>Personally, I think that you will probably grow more as a musician by learning a broader range of repertoire now rather than concentrating exclusively on audition pieces. However, I also believe that there is real value in coming back to some previously learned music after a rest: presumably there will be a minimal need to focus on technical issues and one can focus on making music, on interpretting, and on communicating. The notes take less work so you can focus on the sound. Most artists speak of how their interpretation grows and matures over time: they come back again and again to certain pieces.</p>
<p>It would be pointless to give a rule as to the ideal length of time spent on audition repertoire, not only because of the differences in individual teacher preferences, but also because of the differences between individual students and between instruments. </p>
<p>String players and pianists on average tend to spend longer on their repertoire than do brass and woodwind players. This is partly because most serious string players and pianists have been taking private lessons on their instruments for 10 to 14 years by the time they get to the end of high school and are thus working on heavy-duty repertoire. The woodwind and brass players, on the other hand, usually have only 3 to 6 years of private study by the end of high school. A lot of a woodwind or brass player’s development occurs in the last two years of high school and thus most of them sound very different at the age of 18 than they did at the age of 16 (and are playing markedly tougher rep). Certainly the differences between individuals are greater than those differences between instruments.</p>
<p>Violindad…very silly question (I have no musical background!)</p>
<p>I am currently looking at everything about auditioning I can find (s is soph in hs). I keep seeing this “repertoire list” cropping up on the different college websites. Can you tell me exactly what this means? S plays jazz piano no classical background at all. Is this list something that he compiles for his audition panel to choose from? Is is a list of all the tunes he knows or only those that he has perfected? Thanks!</p>
<p>squiggles1118,
I have applied to schools as both a classical flute major, and a jazz studies major. I can tell you that the lists for jazz studies auditions are very loose - usually along the lines of “pick any 3-5 standards that are varied” varied meaning fast swing, medium swing, latin, funk, blues…
At the most they will specify a particular tune and you can pick the rest. Your son should know that some schools with a jazz studies major require you to do a classical audition as well. Later down the line you should see if the schools of interest do require this. Don’t stress about it though. Even at Eastman they told me that my classical audition wouldn’t have too much weight - what really matters is the jazz audition.</p>
<p>If you son is only a sophmore it’s great that he’s thinking about being a music major, but I definitely think it is way too early to start thinking about schools and tunes, ect. Wait til the end of junior year to start thinking about this stuff. Good luck!</p>
<p>squiggles1118: Not a silly question at all. My experience is with classical applications and jazz ones might be different in regards to how the “lists” are handled, so hopefully a jazz parent will respond.</p>
<p>For many schools there are two very different lists:</p>
<ol>
<li> The repertoire list: a list of pieces studied over the previous few years; some schools specify how many years to go back (often 2 or 3). This list is generally no more than about a page in length and can be much shorter. It can become a judgment call as to what to include. We included only works memorized and performed publicly (except for those etudes/studies which would never be performed publicly), but some schools asked for an indication of which works had been either memorized or publicly performed, so obviously you can include those that haven’t been.<br></li>
</ol>
<p>The repertoire list is not a list for the auditioning panel to choose from. Some of the repertoire on it might be 2 or more years old and long forgotten or at least not in any kind of shape to use in an audition! This list was not required by all the schools. I believe it has relatively little weight and is used along with things like any essays, recommendation letters, and resume to get a picture of the student.</p>
<ol>
<li> The audition list: a much shorter list of pieces chosen to be performed in the actual audition. This list usually only consists of 3 to 5 pieces. Depending on the length of the audition and the length of the pieces, all or just a portion of these pieces will be played. In the jazz world, usually the audition requirements will specify different types of repertoire for the audition (e.g. a ballad; a blues tune; a jazz standard or upbeat tune). At the audition, sometimes the panel allows the student to choose the first piece from their audition list, but sometimes the panel makes all the decisions as to what is played.</li>
</ol>
<p>Deagle1’s response above refers to the audition list, I believe.</p>
<p>The following four threads here at CCMusic Major discuss repertoire lists:</p>
<p>How do I write a Repertoire List?
Repertoire List
Help! Resumes and repertoire lists?
Resume and repertoire help</p>