Yes she sure did. I asked her one final time since we kept getting constant emails from Berklee. I suggested that since we will be in Boston anyway for her audition for NEC maybe she might want to go audition at Berklee again to see if she could increase her scholarship amount that was offered to her after the summer audition. She responded with an immediate and emphatic “NO”. So I won’t mention it again.
My D is auditioning at CCPA for MT. Their MT program is well known and respected. Can’t speak about jazz voice, but I’m assuming there is some overlap in the voice component. We’re excited about it.
SpartanDrew, I pm’d you.
This was the best thing I saw this morning! I’m not sure I can post a link to the article on the thread but I’m posting here for all our music students to keep the faith! Just because one person/professor/adjudicator may not like your stuff doesn’t mean you won’t be successful! Stay true to yourself and keep on your path! Check out the story about Brian Wilson (Beach Boys). I LOVED this!! http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/music/brian-wilson-music-class-f-grade-changed-article-1.3760582
High school music teachers are teaching the conventional basics of music in most cases- traditional harmony and counterpoint for instance. Compositions in a high school class are often required to follow rules that the students are just learning. Very original works can earn bad grades because they are not “correct.”
While sometimes unfortunate, as in Wilson’s case, this grading is entirely different than creative appraisal later on in prescreenings, audition/interviews and other applications for mature composers- and in later career commissions and performances with reviews- where creativity and originality are highly valued and mastery of those high school basics is more than assumed.
For any emerging or mature composer, of course one person will like your work and one person won’t. If everyone liked it you are probably not doing good work.
One other thing: when an experienced teacher does have criticism, sometimes it is helpful in the long term to listen and get off your path a bit- that’s how you learn and grow 
Thanks for sharing this light piece that serves as a great reminder of the subjectivity in art and is a nice source of hope for aspiring artists.
Final prescreen result came though today. Passed at Cal State Fullerton.
Awesome @BearHouse ! Still waiting on Purchase here. Last two years those invitations came out I think on the 18th or close to it so probably any day.
So now that we finally have all the auditions, flights and hotels set (not to mention making sure all S22’s activities are covered), the wrenches will start to be thrown. Cold weather and resulting low pressure in the city water system have closed S18’s school yet another day, knocking out the senior one act play festival scheduled for this weekend, in which he is directing one and acting (with S22) in another. When shall it be rescheduled? How about the weekend of his USC audition, perhaps his most important audition? Sure, why not! Grrr…
Oh no!!! Are you joking? What is he going to do? He can’t miss the audition! And he can’t miss the play. Hopefully the school will work around his audition schedule good grief.
After a weird day yesterday of hearing about kids getting audition invitations from Purchase and D coming up empty, I had resigned myself to thinking maybe she didn’t make the cut there for an audition. Then she got an email at 8:30pm last night saying she was invited. Crazy! So that was the last of the prescreens and all of the auditions are now set. First one tomorrow at Western Mich. She had another lesson yesterday with her vocal jazz teacher and sounds like she’s ready.
I’ll post tomorrow after it’s over. Good luck everyone starting on Phase 3 of the journey…the live auditions! Then Phase 4…the wait for decisions and the final decisions.
Spartan Drew did your daughter hear from NEC?
Congrats on Purchase and good luck to your D at W. Michigan, @SpartanDrew ! Looking forward to hearing how it goes.
S18 is likely going to have to miss the play. We’ll see if the school can work something out, but of course he is not the only one with scheduling issues.
He also has an audition tomorrow, at Loyola-NO. Since only 20 minutes of travel is involved and his private voice teacher is on the faculty, it’s a good one to have now before he hits the road for weeks.
Yes. She has her audition scheduled for Feb 20 then we will head to New York for New School and Purchase.
Oh right @vistajay! I forgot you are headed there tomorrow. Jealous…wish we were headed there too LOL. We LOVE NOLA. We were looking at returning for another visit on the President’s open house date of March 10 but the flights and hotel are super $$$$ because of some music festival. UGH. Not sure if that will happen or not. We might wait and see how offers come in and then decide to go back during D’s spring break in April but I’d like hubby to join us and he wouldn’t be able to then. Scheduling conflicts are a pain. She can’t go on the April open house date because she heads to New York for the YoungArts Regional program which is awesome. It’s a good thing I love to travel because we will be doing plenty of that over the next few months…
Break a leg for your S tomorrow! Let us know how it goes!
Wow…it’s all really starting again! My work takes a major slow down this time of year, and Jan and Feb in MN calls for a major distraction to survive, so I’ll be following your journeys with wine and pop corn…
If only I were busy running around in circles for my kid instead of trying to keep myself busy in my empty nest…it all goes too fast…
Well, first audition of 2018 in the books! D felt it went very well (minus sight reading which she said she butchered…eek). They are not taught sight reading at all in her choir which puts her at a disadvantage. I wonder how much that weighs into admission decisions and scholarship? Other than that, she felt VERY comfortable with the head of vocal jazz and her 20 minute audition actually lasted for 30 minutes. At one point he asked her if she had perfect pitch which has become an interesting question to us to follow up on. Her voice teacher asked her the same thing a week or 2 ago. I’m not sure it’s of any real value whether or not she has it but maybe an interesting anecdote. The other good thing was her nerves for the audition translated into nervous energy which was a good thing. He actually commented that he loved her energy so I guess it’s the silver lining of the nervousness.
I will say this much, we were BOTH exhausted yesterday! It’s only a 90 minute drive to get there for us and we did get up and leave early but it had me grateful that I moved her Frost audition up a week so we will be able to come home for a week to decompress. I think the full on week in Boston and NYC will completely wear us out.
@vistajay how did everything go at Loyola yesterday?
@SpartanDrew - congrats on the first audition being done! FYI perfect pitch is a VERY good thing to have in music school! My S has perfect pitch (he discovered/confirmed this while taking AP Theory last year) - he says it really helps in aural skills classes, especially, but also in theory, other music classes as well as in ensemble work.
@classicalsaxmom I’m really not sure she has it. I am sure she has relative pitch though. I will say, I took years and years of piano lessons although I don’t play anymore sadly. But all of that instilled basic music and pitch into me. She and I played around during the car ride home yesterday and she could start singing a song she knew, a recorded song, and every time she pulled up the itunes recording, every single time, we discovered she had sung it exactly in the same key the artist had. That was crazy. And she can identify notes on a piano by ear (as can I). We were both 100% when playing a note and identifying it. That being said, I couldn’t sing a middle C and have it be accurate. I don’t know why. It’s weird. I can identify it when it’s played but can’t sing it without hearing it. I do know that I have an ear for pitch and can ALWAYS tell when someone is off pitch and it’s like nails down a chalkboard to me. It made me wonder if it’s genetic. My Mom used to yell at me from the kitchen when I practiced piano if I hit a note flat or sharp…“That’s FLAT!!!” or something to that effect. And I’d yell back “I KNOW!!!” Hahaha! SO I know Mom had it too. It’s weird…and kind of cool. I guess we will explore it further.
One funny anecdote… a male vocalist in one of her Berklee ensembles this summer was supposed to harmonize with her for a song they were doing together and was completely off pitch. ACK! It was painful for us BOTH to hear! She wouldn’t let me share that video with anyone LOL.
One other question for those of you who have traveled this path before us. D said she absolutely butchered her sight reading yesterday. They don’t teach it at all in her school or even theory for that matter. She has really been on her own for all of her music skills for jazz, etc. How important or I guess how much weight do they put into the sight reading for admission and scholarships? If she nails the rest of her audition but doesn’t do well in sight reading will it hurt her? If so does anyone have any suggestions for exercises she can do to self-teach?
Thanks!
Good relative pitch helps a lot, too!
re: sight reading, I don’t know how much it is weighted - I expect it varies by school and by instrument/prof/program. They don’t expect it to be perfect. If it’s clear from your D’s application that she has been on her own a lot they may cut her some slack. They make instrumentalists do sight singing at auditions, too, and most are not trained singers. Before his auditions, my S hadn’t really been singing at all since his voice changed. However, his first Music Ed methods class in college was vocal methods and he absolutely loved it and he really enjoyed singing again, which makes me happy. He used to sing constantly as a little boy.
In our area, district band and all state auditions for instrumentalists heavily weight sight reading (1/3 of the score I think?) because they want to select a group who can put together a good concert with 2 days of rehearsal, so it is a skill S practiced throughout HS.
At one point in the past S used sightreadingfactory.com and felt it was helpful, especially since you can pick harder time/key signatures or randomize it if you prefer. His HS band used SmartMusic for assignments and there was a sight reading feature for that, but it was not as challenging, he said. You might look for some apps to see if there is anything good.
@SpartanDrew yay! You made it through the first audition of the Big Push. As regards your sight reading question, although my D was applying to Classical or MT based VP programs, she also was asked to sight read at several auditions. My D attended a high school with almost zero in the way of arts programs, so she had very little choir experience, when compared to other applicants. She felt sight reading was definitely a weak area for her, yet it certainly didn’t hurt her in terms of admission offers. Jazz is likely somewhat different, but, still… don’t worry. And YES! Every audition day is inexplicably exhausting! Make sure to take a lot of time for relaxing and decompressing whenever you can in these next few weeks.