Preparing for Ensemble Auditions

by Sarah Jane Young

The excerpt list can often seem overwhelming, and it can be easy to find yourself just running through the excerpts without working on specific problems. Here are some ideas to help organize your work:

First, go to the library and find recordings of all the pieces you do not know or have never listened to. It is wise to listen to more then one recording of the same piece to get different ideas of what you can do, find different tempos that should be attempted, and to find the recording that you like the best. It’s also helpful to listen with a score or the part and to take note of which instruments you are playing with and to get a better idea as to what the bigger picture is for the excerpt. After all, they are only excerpts from a larger work. Listening to the pieces should also help you to hear the orchetra part as you are playing the excerpt. You should try to make the orchestra inside your head louder than yourself, to really get into the piece.

In order to gain a better understanding of the composer's style, listen to recordings of other pieces by the same composer, especially any symphonies, and his or her use of the flute in these other works. It will help you get a clearer picture of the excerpt, and help it to gain a "life" of it's own.

Second, label each excerpt with a 1, 2, or 3. 1 being the most comfortable and 3 being the least comfortable. You should try to work on at least one excerpt from each category a day or so. This way you are working on the difficult ones, but keeping your confidence by working on the more comfortable ones as well, and none of the excerpts are getting neglected.

Third, write down all the difficulties you find in each excerpt. These can be very general (like intonation or articulation) or very specific (going from high A to high F# to B without cracking). When you chose to work on the excerpt, first practice an exercise that pertains to one of the problems in the excerpt. Do not try to cover all the problems at once, just go one at a time. And try to transfer the work you do on the exercise immediately to the excerpt. (This idea comes from FSU Professor of Flute, Eva Amsler.)

Here is a sample excerpt list, with some common challenges to focus on:

Here are some sources and exercises you can use to work on the problems listed above:

Of course there are many more exercises, references, and problems that you can add to this list. This is just to help you get started! When you start feeling comfortable with the excerpt, try playing with a bunch of different recordings to try to adjust to different ideas and tempos. This might even help you to appreciate the fact that when you take the audition you get to play this great music how you want to because you have no conductor and no ensemble.

One of my favorite quotes about taking auditions is from Jeanne Baxtresser:

“I believe an audition can be a glorious experience. The orchestral audition is a singular experience in a musician’s life because there is no other time when you come on stage alone, to play this fabulous music without anybody getting in your way. There are no problems with balance or intonation. There is no conductor; it’s your interpretation of the Debussy, it’s your interpretation of Brahms fourth or Beethoven third—what a great freedom. We should never forget to let inspiration be their guide, or performances will become mere athletic events. I think to bring into an audition the idea of maintaining a perfect standard crushes the creative side of what you’re trying to do. You are indeed in the audition trying to seduce this jury to hearing something that goes beyond technical accuracy, that reaches levels of inspiration. I would want a jury to hear not the player but the music. The music is so great, and if you do a great audition the committee will, I think, be mostly just taken away with the beauty of the music. They realize, ‘My gosh! This person brought me into Brahms, or Debussy, I want to sit by this person.’ If you’re ready and you have all this experience and background behind you, you can just fly, play this music and have a great time, and maybe even get the job!”

For some more reading materials on taking auditions, check out these sources: