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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