Welcome! Three other music major kids. Wow. You’re a real veteran and must have some crazy battle scars. Please let us know what/how the three other kids are doing. Good luck at Vandy!
Thank you all! And my “name” here is confusing. The sax player is my second son (but the one I joined CC with). He graduated last year from Frost and is happily working in Colorado! My first son (trumpet) switched to accounting and my third son (trombone) switched to business and real estate (his priority is making money…LOL!!)! My only daughter is the one adding to my grey hairs now and is a clarinet player. It is SO bittersweet to reach the end.
And I have probably been through most issues involved in auditions, including a trombone breaking during warmup.
The next 2 months are going to be crazy. Vanderbilt this weekend, the following weekend to Miami as she has been chosen for the Frost Honor Band, then BACK to Miami for her audition on 9th, back to back with Lynn University on 10th. Then the next weekend she has her solo and ensemble performances, USF audition then off to Baltimore for Peabody audition on the Monday. The next weekend is FSU, then finally the first weekend in March is Oberlin.
My suitcase is living in my bedroom.
(And another inaccuracy in my name…moved from NY to FL 2.5 years ago!!)
Welcome back FLclarinetmom!!!
ps I didn’t have my glasses on previously; now see you meant this thread might be for vocalists only, not the forum 
Hi @NYsaxmom ! Thanks for lending your experience to our exhausted but merry band. My son will be headed to Miami and FSU also in the coming weeks. But this weekend it is UNC. Best of luck to your D!
Hi @NYsaxmom! My baby is a college junior now and I can relate to the bittersweet feelings. I know how stressful the whole audition process can be but I also remember a real sense of adventure/purpose/camaraderie too. It was all very exciting and I loved spending time with my S. Best of luck to your D - she’s considering a great group of schools!
Drummergirl you make me smile. I told my daughter how much I was looking forward to all our trips together over the next 2 months and her answer was “I’m not” !!! A knife through the heart would’ve been less painful. LOL!! But I get it. She’s a teen and can’t wait to fly the coop. And she’s such a good kid that I accept the occasional slight!!
Hi FLclarinetmom- I’ll be at Vanderbilt this weekend with my D, but in, wait for it, vocal performance. They have quite the slate of events scheduled. Maybe we’ll run into each other. She’s the soprano from Brooklyn.
While I’m on, I should report that D had good auditions and experiences at Michigan, Shepherd, and Oberlin thus far. Mom and I are switching off on the trips, Mom did Michigan, I went to Houston. The tips from this forum have been most helpful re: humidifiers etc. Thanks, everyone! The one unexpected thing that happened was that D went to see her friend’s rehearsal for an ensemble concert and a fire alarm went off ten minutes in and the building was evacuated.
After Vandy we catch a late flight to Pittsburgh for CMU. This is her toughest travel challenge, as we don’t land in Pittsburgh until after midnight, so probably after 1 by the time she’s in bed. Luckily the audition next day isn’t until after 11 AM, unlike the scary before 10 AM audition time at Shepherd. Glad to be past that earliest (in the day) audition time.
Hope everything goes swimmingly for you!
Wow!! Just catching up with all of these great posts! I’ve been traveling this week for work (another suitcase week for me) and haven’t had a minute to even call home much less catch up on anything else. These audition schedules sound BRUTAL. It makes me feel less badly about ours. And welcome @NYsaxmom!!! I think we will be at Frost the same day as you and your D. I imagine it will be crazy that day.
If anyone wants to connect for a cuppa joe at some of the auditions please PM me! I am all in and love meeting fellow parents out there traveling this crazy journey. I think it was either @BearHouse or @vistajay that joked about making up t-shirts or business cards that say “NO. We don’t know where (insert name) is going to college yet and we won’t until April. Thanks for asking!” I’m ready to start wearing my shirt now! I should tape record myself and hit play for the literally hundred times I’ve been asked already.
I texted D yesterday and she sounds like she is ready to go! Prepared on all fronts (except sight reading haha!) and ready to go give these auditions her all. Makes me happy. She’s come a long way in the last 4 months and I can’t wait to watch her grow in college.
Our schedule is 2/9 Frost (we will be in Miami for a 4 day weekend), 2/20 NEC (2nights in Boston), 2/23 Purchase and 2/24 at New School (NYC for 5 nights).
BREAK A LEG to all of your talented kids and stay hydrated and healthy all you parents! I think I should buy stock in Napa valley wine for the next month LOL.
P.S. @BearHouse and @dramasopranomom I am at my biggest company meeting of the year and one of their gifts to everyone was an awesome little mini humidifier!!! I scored 2! Yippee!
Welcome to the returners and the newbies. I hope you are having a wonderful audition experience. My family went through the experience w/ my D last year as a vocal performance major. She is presently a freshman at Oberlin. I would sure share any questions or concerns about the process. Good luck to all!
Hi, I’ve been lurking and learning a lot. I have a daughter who is currently a sophomore, and most likely majoring in music. so I’m just starting this process with her. My older daughter is a Composition and film major at Tulane. Earlier in the thread it was mentioned that there are few vegan options in NOLA. Both Tulane and Loyola have vegan options in their on campus dining options. There is a Whole Foods (among other places which deliver) nearby on Magazine street which delivers and there are also resteraunts nearby with vegan options. There are also options via Uber eats.
Hello and welcome @Musicmom2two! AKA Long time lurker first time poster! :-)) Thanks so much for the awesome info on Tulane/Loyola vegan options! My D is the one accepted to Loyola NO and is vegan. We struggled to find options there but we were not shown the cafeteria on campus at all so if Loyola remains one of her top options we may go back for a visit and get a better feel for it.
One note of advice I got from some colleagues on the humidifier topic. I am in Las Vegas for my meeting this week. The hotel is SO DRY. I would wake up several times in the night feeling like someone had stuffed cotton in my throat and chug water. I didn’t score the mini travel humidifiers until night 2. Some colleagues had suggested filling the bathtub with hot water and leaving it full. GREAT idea! My other friend who lives out here now and is used to the dry desert walked into my room and said “OMG it’s like a rainforest in here!” Hahaha! It doesn’t feel that way to me but last night was the first night my throat didn’t feel terrible. It works! Cheap hack but it works!
We always get a room with windows that open or a balcony with doors that open. No vocalists but allergies and dry air really bothers some of us. There is one chain in particular that always has balconies but doubt I am allowed to mention it. We also get airbnb’s with fresh air. I suppose in a desert climate this won’t help as much…
S18 had a scholarship audition at UNC yesterday, and it seemed to go very well. It’s a bigger program than we realized, with 80 vocal performance majors. But only 20 percent are men. S18 was able to find a good morning routine, and his voice felt awake and strong for his morning audition. There were five teachers present. He got some great comments. In a few weeks they will pick 8 music applicants to come back for another weekend, then picking 4 to receive a full ride scholarship. Not just voice students compete: every instrument auditions. Hopefully S18 is in the mix but if not he had a great experience.
Wow that sounds great vistajay!! Best of luck to him!
That does sound great @vistajay! Positive comments are helpful especially as our kids put themselves out there for critique.
We just got back from a 5 day trip. I expected a Tuesday collapse but was off by a day. Today was a doozy.
We left early Thursday for UCLA. For anyone auditioning there in the future, I recommend staying at the Luskin Conference Center. It will set you back a pretty penny but it is right on campus. Easy parking and easy exploring of the campus and Westwood. A last minute arrangement was made with a faculty pianist who is a close friend of D’s vocal teacher. So on Thursday night she worked for about 90 minutes with the accompanist. This pianist also replaced the assigned accompanist for her audition. All of this was unexpected but welcome and invaluable.
UCLA auditions are well run but no frills. They clearly know they are one of the top programs and there is not a lot of selling of the program. There was no feedback or conversation. Fortunately, the accompanist she had been working with was able to let her know she did well. Told her she should be proud. UCLA in the books. Feeling good. Now a drive to Santa Barbara.
UCSB is beautiful. The audition day was well run, there was a nice faculty presentation and program presentation, and people/students seemed happy. I was a little dismayed to learn that she may need an “academic” admit as well. While she is eligible for a UC, she is not academically competitive for admissions. However, they added that if you are applying for the BM rather than the BA (which is what she is doing), it is kind of like being a recruited athlete. They called it a “talent” admission. Her audition went well and she received a lot of positive feedback. She came out all smiles. Now a drive to SF.
Had a day to explore the city and then audition today. However, today quickly fell apart. Received a message that all of our dogs (being boarded), are coughing and had to be taken to the vet with suspicion of canine influenza. This stressed wife and D out! They love their dogs. Arrived at the Conservatory for tours at 10:00 am. Audition at 2:00 pm. Walked through the city, in the cold, without a coat. Right before her warm up time she stated “I just want to go home.” Ugh. Audition was a mess. Missed a whole vocal run, voice gave out, and missed several notes. Came out with tears in her eyes. Had to stay another hour for an interview. I think she tried to pull it together but was already emotionally and physically spent. Too bad, she did like the conservatory and thought she could be happy there. She was just ran out of gas today.
She slept in the car the whole ride home. In hindsight, three auditions and one intense lesson in five days is probably too much. It certainly was today. However, I remain positive it will work out as it should.
Ohhhhhhh @BearHouse I was smiling reading your entire post then died a little inside reading the end. I’m so sorry it ended on a sour note…no pun intended LOL. First off, being big dog (and cat) lovers here, I can tell you that the news about the pups would have affected all of us in the very same way. I don’t know if you have ever considered this before, but we always have a local college or high school kid stay at the house with our animals when we travel. Always. It’s so much better for them as well as us. Even when we leave for vacation and someone stays at the house it’s stressful for them having us gone but at least they are in their own home with someone around all the time. It’s much cheaper than boarding too. PM me and I can give you more details on what we do if it’s something you might consider.
Your post on the 3 auditions in 5 days had me cringe a bit as that is exactly what we will be doing. Originally, I had us on a 12 day tour of auditions starting in Miami and ending in New York. Then fortunately sanity took over and I realized that would be absolutely exhausting for D as well as me so I moved up the Frost audition by a week. I’m so happy I did. We will be 4 nights in Miami (which seems like heaven to me as I stare out at all of the snow). Then we come home for a week to rest and recharge. Then D and I head out again for Boston and New York and 3 auditions in 6 days…eeek. Sounds familiar. Hubby is traveling to Miami with us, the only college trip he has been able to go on with his crazy work schedule, and our college son will stay at home with the dogs while we are out and commute to school. The trip to Boston and NY will be just D and me so hubs will be home with the pooches which is good. I worry that having Purchase and the train travel/commute from the city there on Friday morning and back later that day then New school the very next day might be exhausting for D. But her New School audition is at 2 the following day so at least she can sleep in and rest up. And then we will be done. All of these months of prep, research, applications, prescreens, waiting for invitations and traveling to auditions will come to an end! It’s crazy! It seems surreal. I have ZERO doubt that March, and the waiting for results, will seem like an eternity to us all! I’m so happy for all of the great people on this thread and can’t wait to hear everyone’s audition stories, acceptances and final decisions! What a journey!
When I started this thread last spring it was pretty much intended to be a spinoff of @GoForth journal for this year’s parents going through the process. It’s been great how many people have been on here sharing their stories and I’m just as anxious to hear all of your kids’ results as I am my own. I didn’t realize at the time how appropriately worded the title of this thread would be. We have toured, been on a crazy journey and are almost at the end with the decisions!
Break a leg everyone! Stay healthy, push that vitamin C, stay hydrated (and humidified haha!) and get lots of rest. In March we can all jump on here and tell jokes to pass the time until decisions are released. 
Sorry to hear the trip did not end on a high note, @BearHouse . We have a 3 in 6 day stretch coming up in which we drive to FSU, then drive home, catch a plane to South Carolina, then another to Miami-Frost (where he auditions and also has interviews/activities for a scholarship weekend). I am worried about S18 on the Miami leg of the trip. I hope your D is now able to focus on the good parts of her trip, and that she has great news coming soon!
Oh @BearHouse , I’m sorry the tail end of the weekend was so rough. It will be okay. There are ALWAYS surprises (and sometimes they come in the form of sick pets and worn out auditioners). Gosh, so many of you are doing clustered auditions ( @SpartanDrew and @vistajay )! We knew many last year who did so successfully, but I’m so glad we were able to space D’s out; you really cannot be fully prepared for how taxing the travel and visits and auditions and trial lessons and interviews are. Hang in there, guys! And take every possible opportunity to decompress. You’re so close now! Your kids have got this. It’s not possible to be 100% all the time, but they are ready.
Note to singers: small humidifier for hotel rooms (the moisture level in hotels is akin to the Sahara), hand sanitizer (and USE it!), Airborne is great to boost the immune system (store brand is fine), water (and more water- carry your own bottle), tea bags and small honey packets or even better, honey sticks which are available in most health food markets (zip lock bags will prevent a disaster!). The most important thing is a scark, or several scarves of different types! You will never see a top opera singer without one from September thru April and they all carry lighter ones for use indoors in AC!
It’s a learning process…!
We booked a VRBO house for Miami so I’m hoping it’s not terribly dry and being Miami guessing it won’t be. I scored 2 mini travel humidifiers at my company meeting last week. Yay! We are all pushing the airborne/Emergen C right now and I picked up elderberry syrup today for sick hubby (ughhh) and D to start taking from suggestion by @diglass who swears by it. I’m just hoping like crazy we can keep her healthy through February.