| My first audition was for Dallas, 2nd trumpet.
I was a senior and the audition happened relatively early in the season. The list wasn't huge, as I recall, but full of a lot of stuff I really didn't know that well.
I was very green, as it was my first, and made several mistakes. The first was that I only prepared the list from the excerpt books which were sadly lacking when it came to knowing the whole piece.
Well, that's why they're called "excerpt books", Manny
The second mistake I made was bringing a Wispa mute to practice on. Instead of finding a ball room or conference room to ractice the list the night before, I blew my brains out with the bloody mute in my bell. Wispa mutes are okay, I guess if you don't push hard against them. But that's what I did.
One annoying part of that audition was having a proctor who was a bit of an ass, if you want to know the truth. I set up to play the Haydn second movement and played it. It went very nicely on Vacchiano's Besson Eb I'd bought from him. After I ended and was getting ready for the first excerpt, the proctor said "That was really nice... and you're from NEW YORK? Wow...". So, the idea that one could be from New York and be a musical player was apparently a foreign one to that fellow, whomever he was. It was just a needlessly silly thing to say, I thought.
The rest of the audition went poorly. My chops were not right as a result of the shellacking I gave them the night before and I missed too many notes. They put up Ravel's Piano Concerto and it was fine until they asked me to play the end of the first movement, which I'd never heard, much less seen. I remember Ein Heldenleben was a cackfest. Yucch!
So, my first was my worst and they all went progressively better and I, more importantly, learned something at each one that I took in to the next one. It added up when I got the job in Seattle. In Boston, I played my best but Charlie just played better and showed a greater variety in his arsenal than I did. In short, he played like a seasoned pro while I was, at 26, still a kid.
But life has a lovely way of working out and I love my life here and really couldn't ask to play with a better orchestra. There might be a couple as good but none better. It's all a question of what one thinks music should be about.
ML |