<p>Oh, I sure wish I could hear from some Huxford Orchestra people. Anybody else out there? I gotta bump my poor little thread.</p>
<p>Thanks to the rest of you for trying to provide some assistance.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, most college orchestras work a little differently than a lot of college/football marching bands. College marching bands tend to practice in the late afternoons, early evenings, and/or weekends, specifically so that non-majors can play. Their rehearsal times don’t conflict with many classes. Intentionally. You are right though, Montegut. Lots of non-majors play in those bands. And they’re a huge time commitment, like you said. But they don’t typically present a direct conflict with classes.</p>
<p>College orchestras present a different problem, in a lot of cases. They’re often comprised of mostly majors, and they’re offered as a regular class period, during the day. We saw that the Huxford Orchestra, for instance, rehearses on Mondays and Wednesdays, from 2-3:45. At a lot of schools my kids have looked at, orchestra rehearsal times conflict with other non-music-major required courses, especially labs. They don’t conflict with music major courses, because music majors are required to be in them. That’s why enrolling in a college orchestra can be problematic for non-majors. Also, more than in bands, non-majors often play second fiddle (pun intended) to majors, and for some good reasons. The majors need the exposure and experience as first chair, etc, for employment and grad school. But this does vary by school. Some schools are more even-handed with majors and non-majors, placing them based solely on their auditions. That’s one of the things we’re trying to find out about Bama.</p>
<p>While on campus, we did hear of two students who were non-major string players. One was an engineering student. We were told that he felt he had to leave the orchestra after his freshman year because of all his conflicts “with other things.” But, we were told, he was very busy in other organizations, and we don’t know if that involvement caused him to quit orchestra or if class conflicts caused him to quit. The other student we heard about was not an engineering major (maybe econ or poli sci?), and he left the orchestra because certain courses that he was interested conflicted with orchestra rehearsals.</p>
<p>Since playing in the orchestra is huge on my son’s list for “what I want in a college,” we were hoping to hear some other success stories of non-majors who managed to play all four years – or the majority of semesters.</p>
<p>I posted here on the Bama forum first, since Bama people would know best about the Bama orchestra. But after realizing that music majors would have a better understanding of our concerns, and that more music major CCer’s could be found on the Music Major forum, I posted the same thread there. But no luck! Not a single response. (I think that’s because most of the really serious CC music majors are looking at other more music-y schools, like Oberlin, Rice, Eastman, Julliard, Curtis, etc. No offense to anybody.)</p>
<p>Anyway … does anybody else have any first-hand or second-hand knowledge of the Huxford Orchestra? We’re grateful for the responses to date! But we’d love to hear more.</p>
<p>Thanks so much!</p>