<p>As we found this board very late in the process my son (bass trombone classical) took all of his trial lessons in his senior year, the night before the audition at the distant colleges and a couple of months ahead for the closer ones. The only college he did not manage a lesson beforehand was Indiana University as the professor had a personal emergency the day we arrived and we are going to Indiana U for that lesson next week. They were all very approachable and willing to give trail lessons. </p>
<p>I thnk the key is to have the lesson at some point and not worry too much about when in the process it is. The trial lesson will give you a good idea of whether you can picture yourself with that professor for four years or not. Also, my son found having spoken to the professor for an hour or so and playing for them beforehand made him much less nervy, at the Indiana audition he was very nervous and had to start a couple of pieces twice before getting through them. For the lessons he had a couple of months before hand he tried to work on the areas the professor had pointed out. He also attended three one week music camps at colleges last summer and met a lot of good professors that way and found chatting with the other campers gave him lots of ideas of the “good” schools out there to apply to. Just like chatting on this board will give you good ideas. As a starting point if you live in the North East and don’t want the full conservatory experience I would look at the list of my son’s acceptances on that thread. Also, look at your top local professional orchestra’s and see where the trombone player’s teach. Most of them teach at two colleges and are generally excellent at teaching the classical side as that is their daily job. Overall, we did not meet a trombone professor that my son would not be happy to study with for four years. PM me if you have specific questions on any of the colleges he applied to.</p>