My introduction to the orchestral audition process was very, let's say, unique. In lessons, my teachers, Doug Waddell and Patsy Dash would have me perform technical exercises or technique-based etudes, and at the end, I would work on the solo or ensemble pieces that I was assigned. The expectation was that whatever you were given, you would work on and have as prepared as possible the next week. There was rarely any mention of difficulty, or what age that students usually learn these pieces at. Simply, “Here’s your assignment for next week,” or, “Here’s what you will perform at the next concert.” If the piece was indeed difficult they would say, “Spend a little more time on this one.” Because of my progress, and their plans for me to audition for Interlochen, they started adding excerpts to my assignment list. However, when they began to include them into our regimen, they didn’t call them excerpts, at least not to my recollection. They simply said, “These are things we play in the orchestra.” At first glance, I thought the new pieces looked pretty easy. We had played much more difficult music in my opinion, and I was also excited to play “professional” music.
For the next couple of weeks we worked on, I think, Scheherazade 3rd and 4th movement, Capriccio Espagnol, Lieutenant Kije, Magic Flute, Porgy and Bess, Appalachian Spring, Carnival Overture, and Brahms 4 on the triangle. Then, in one random lesson, my teacher handed me an application for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra Substitute Percussion audition. I was completely unaware that we were having lessons in order to prepare for a PROFESSIONAL LEVEL AUDITION. I thought the music was easy at first glance, but given that now it was for this big important event, I started rethinking everything. It must be more difficult somehow, a kid can’t play it as well as a professional, it can’t be this simple. Because of this, I got super nervous at the audition, didn’t play well, and of course did not get on the sub list.
In college I found myself thinking back to that experience and started to wonder, “why can’t it be that simple?” Many of my colleagues perpetuated the idea that it wasn’t that simple, and given that I was quite inexperienced at the time, I tended to trust their advice. However, the more I worked with that type of intensity, the more I got nervous, tense and the performances got worse and more stressful. It wasn’t until I started to do the opposite and try what my teachers had me do that things got easier and I started to see results as early as my sophomore year. As soon as I fully accepted that this way of preparing the way to go, I started to consistently advance and my nerves became more manageable overall. Eventually, I won two principal positions preparing exactly as I did when I prepared my first professional audition with my teachers.
While performance preparation is simple, variables surrounding it can get in the way. In my almost 16 years of auditioning and 20 years of performing, I’ve tried almost every strategy or suggestion given to me by colleagues, teachers, at clinics or masterclasses, from listening to interviews or podcasts and reading many books. I did all of this to get back to and preserve that simplistic way of preparing. I try to help my students by giving them strategies to develop a healthy, low-stress way of preparing for any performance. In my class, “The Art of Performing,” I will be presenting all of those strategies that I have found the most helpful over three days. I know from experience how stressful performances and auditions can be, and I want to help as many people get relief from that anxiety as possible so that they can perform the way they would like whenever they want or need to.