I just heard from a friend who took an audition for a smaller orchestra, and her story really appalled me. What bothered me the most was the fact that the person who should have told the candidates of the decision chose only to tell the winner of the audition, and simply punted an notifying the others, saying that an email would be sent later. This might have worked well if the other candidates hadn’t run into the winner (who knew that they’d won already) on the way out of the audition site. It’s ridiculous that an audition should be run this way. Give people the decency of a dignified response to their playing. If you know you’re not going to hire them, then tell them as soon as possible – and that should be before or at the same time that the winner is notified. Unfortunately, it seems that the smaller the budget size of an ensemble (and often the lower the artistic quality), the self-importance of the audition committee and music director is proportional in an inverse and geometric ratio. One more reason that auditions really suck.
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3 replies on “auditions really suck”
It sucks for larger budget groups also. A friend of mine auditioned for the Air Force Orchestra in D.C. There must have been over fifty candidates. They didn’t pass through anyone from the prelims and, in the next round, only listened to people they had fast tracked to the finals. They should have only done finals and saved the others a lot of time and expense.
gotzta “love” punk-ass behavior wherever it’s fetid rump rears . . .
Ugh. How cowardly, not to mention appallingly rude. Yes, it’s hard to deliver bad news, especially to people you know and like and respect, but the obligation to treat people with basic courtesy should trump that without even a second thought. And you know, even if they had notified everyone, including the winner, later by email, nobody would believe for a minute that the decision hadn’t been made before the committee and MD left the theater. Life, especially professional life, never ceases to provide opportunities to wonder just what the h*ll people are thinking…
@Terrifiddle, I know of groups whose audition practice is for the committee to vote immediately after each candidate, by secret ballot, so that they don’t know who or how many have gone through to finals until after the round is over. I think it’s supposed to prevent those who play later from either being disadvantaged because “we’ve already got too many” or given a leg up because “we haven’t got enough.” The committee could legitimately be surprised to learn that nobody was passed on, if they do it that way, although individual members would of course know that they’d voted no on every candidate.