The Running of Professional Auditions

[Paulver]

After taking our daughter to two completely different orchestral auditions, we're seeing some needless confusion and lack of organization in the way the process is carried out. I'm not talking about amateur auditions. These are professional orchestras. That said, they are not in major cities, but, none the less, "professional!" I'm talking about lost registration checks, no one to direct candidates to where they should report upon arriving at the venue, audition times being moved upon arrival..... resulting in shortening originally determined warmup times, tryout excerpt confusion at the audition, etc.

I'm not trying to be critical, but if this is how things are commonly run, then she's going to have to adjust her approach to these auditions. She's presently a junior in music school, and her prof is wanting her to get used to the audition process BEFORE she has to go through them during her senior year, for her desired job.

I know a number of you have gone through the professional audition process quite a few times, and I'd just like to know if this is how they are normally run, or is she just happening to run into the "loosely" run ones!!! High school festival and college auditions were never like this.

[bloke]

I can’t comment to individual entities’ lack of organization and administration, but I would recommend that anyone - who auditions for any position anywhere - be prepared to adjust their so-called warm-up to 5 to 10 minutes, as well as being prepared to sit without playing for 30 to 40 minutes after that 5 to 10 minute warm-up.

“Picking up one’s instrument cold, pushing the tuning slide in enough to compensate for the instrument being cold, and playing (yes, on a cold instrument with a cold mouthpiece rim) straight through a more difficult excerpt or solo passage - and doing this dozens upon dozens of times, at home - is not a bad idea, and I would strongly recommend working towards mastery of this.
Further, if there is someone in particular who makes a potential applicant nervous - when they play, I would recommend playing for them as often as I could.
… and I don’t believe that all auditions are legitimate, but motivated applicants should be completely prepared (to display excellence under difficult conditions) for those which are legitimate.