TAKING AN AUDITION
I have purposely put this page below Becoming a Professional Player because a successful audition usually comes after one becomes a professional player. Taking auditions can be very difficult. It turns out that winning can also be very difficult. Save your energy in auditions, once you have mastered the repertoire, for things you can control. Be prepared, be prepared. Prepare wisely.
Learn the music.
Solve all your problems
Use your energy sparingly when you are not performing
Pay attention to useful things and ignore everything else
PREPARATION BEFORE THE AUDITION DAY
Use your practice time preparing for an audition to decide how you’d like to play the music. Make choices and stick to them. Keep it simple but make it pristine. If something doesn’t work every time, find another solution.
Spend about half your time looking for opportunities to choreograph physical release that aligns with musical release so you have tons of places in the music you are expecting to play where you have a habit of eliminating physical tension without even thinking about it. This will reward you bountifully. This is USEFUL in an audition.
Spend the other half of your time thinking about bow distribution, tracking, angle, consistency, color, etc.
Do not forget: always start things from no sound when you are beginning a piece of music. The opening is the most important: it introduces you to the audience and creates an expectation for them of how you play, it reveals to you how prepared you actually are, thus setting the tone for yourself of security or insecurity for the rest of that piece. Preparing the opening from silence is the most rewarding investment in whatever excerpt or piece you are practicing.
Only play for people whose taste you think is impeccable. Also, only play for kind, good people who will have your best interests at heart. If you do not trust someone to listen with loving ears, do not play for them.
PRACTICE YOUR MENTAL GAME. This is so important. You must be ready to let people hear you. You must want to be heard. You must remember that the wonderful musicians who are listening to you do not play perfectly, but they do play beautifully. Try to feed them something lovely. Don’t think about them, but know that they are not deities. Instead of approaching an audition as a situation to beg them to hire you, think of it as a chance to make them want to beg you to play chamber music with them.
Pay attention to the things you’re blocking out in your practice when it’s easy to focus. Is someone doing construction in your neighborhood? Notice that you are GOOD at blocking out sounds that have nothing to do with your work. You must remember all the times during concerts that something disruptive happened and you moved on with the concert, times the concert had a crazy disruption and you had to refocus at a time you didn’t expect. These things may happen during an audition and you must not let them disrupt you. Expect disruptions—ALL KINDS OF DISRUPTIONS—and when they happen, say “OK, now what do you want me to play.”
CREATE A SMALL RITUAL for each piece or excerpt so you can be in the right mental space for that piece. For example, for me for the opening of Don Juan I have to remember to bring my left elbow around during the third bar in order to play the fourth bar the way I want to. So before I start, I practice putting my second finger down on the E, and then move my elbow over so it is ready for the G-string. I do this with no sound, just a reminder of what it will feel like in a few seconds to be ready for that. I also really need to remember to use longer bows at the beginning of Bartok Viola Concerto. Before beginning that, I find the A with my left hand and then think about opening my chest so I have a more expansive feeling in my right arm so I don’t play “small.” You should have a little “solution” for things that help you succeed IN EACH PIECE.
NEVER MAKE AN UGLY SOUND. It took me a long time to believe this one. When my colleague Daniel Getz was hired I asked someone from the committee what they’d loved about his playing and they said, “He just always makes a beautiful sound.” I had played a lot of beautiful moments in auditions before that, I think, but I had also tried so hard that there were times I burned the sound when I got nervous and pulled my bow into my body ever so slightly (fight or flight response!). The bow I used to play on simply could not handle that request without too much sizzle to be tasteful. Also, your committee has heard a lot of sound. Give their ears something to seek by inviting them to hear your quietest, sweetest sounds. Any serious hall you audition in will be able to project your sound; don’t worry about being heard. Going quiet will expand your sound palette. Of course, you must have the full brilliant end of the sound spectrum. Just be sure it is ALWAYS BEAUTIFUL.
THE AUDITION DAY
FOCUS ON YOUR PLAYING. Do not take in the beauty of hall, the acoustic, the sound or feel of your shoes on the rug, the banging on the roof, the people behind the screen, things that are unexpected, things that don’t matter. Expect the unexpected and when it comes say OK and go RIGHT BACK IN TO YOUR VIOLA. FOCUS IN. Practice re-focusing in.
DO THE SAME THING YOU’VE BEEN DOING. Don’t change things at the last minute. Do not rehair your bow or visit your luthier or get a special massage or try a new dance class near an audition. Do the same thing you’ve been doing (make sure your hair is fresh but not raw, your viola is in adjustment but the strings are not still brassy, your body is supple but not accommodating a new physical experience, etc.). Keep it simple.
INVITE THEM TO LISTEN TO YOU. Because you have prepared meticulously you should be able to play anything from the list, in any order, as many times as they want. Check your bow hair tension between every excerpt or piece to make sure the change of space hasn’t altered the hair tension. Use the quick reminder for focusing your attention at the beginning of each piece. Do not try to play something magical or superlative. Just play the thing you’ve prepared. This is the best way to allow space for your love of music to be present.
FOCUS ON YOUR BOW. It is your voice. While you are performing, fear can make your body jumpy and your mind foggy and your ears deaf. It can hyper-focus your brain like in the movies where you are bothered by the second-hand on a clock you’d never noticed before. You might have said to yourself, darn it, my bow got soggy and loose in this new space and I am not happy about that, and then felt it sank your audition. Next time, look at your bow and manage it. It turns out that a bow that is not quite the right amount tight can still be a great-sounding tool! Also, if you have prepared well, this should be the way you spent your time in the practice room, so it should be comforting and familiar. As you feel the fight or flight response kick in focus on your bow and you will be able to guide your tracking point to the place you intend it to be, instead of having it slip toward you a little bit and scorch the sound or skid.
RELEASE TENSION. Since you have spent the other half of your preparation energy incorporating release into your musical and physical execution, you should also be able to help yourself manage the fear response by releasing tension throughout your audition. This should also feel comforting and familiar and will help create a positive feedback loop! The positive feedback loop is the one that allows you to feel flexible and supple and focused instead of the opposite, and it gives you the best chance at a sublime musical offering during a performance or audition.
MANAGE THE MUSICAL/TECHNICAL MOMENT. You have prepared, but your task during an audition is to MANAGE. You have probably played a lot of concerts in your life. These should give you confidence and familiarity for your auditions. Maybe you haven’t taken a lot of auditions. That’s ok. Maybe you’ve taken tons. That’s also ok. Just know that your job in the audition is not to control anything; it is to manage your focus. It is to manage the thing happening IN THE MOMENT. It is to be completely devoted to playing the music each moment you are playing. It is to have something go a little off-track and redirect it right away. It is to know what to do with the knowns and the unknowns and surrender control of the outcome. You should not be too invested in any particular audition, but you should be very invested in each one. If you don’t feel ready to surrender control of the outcome, you may not be ready to win. It is a paradox that many successful auditions occurred when the player quit trying to control things outside their control and instead just played the simple things in front of them. Once someone has done that the mystique of auditions sort of vanishes, and it becomes clear that auditions and concerts are essentially the same thing after all.
EXPECT THE WORST. In the warmup room: be sure you have fixed all your problems. if you get cold on stage warm yourself up before you go out there. I mean jumping jacks or a hot pack on your body, not your warmup on the viola. If you get sweaty, have a cloth in your pocket, or a cold pack on your back, or whatever works for you to help regulate your body temperature. Find something soothing to pass the time while you conserve energy. Conserve as much as you can. Many rounds is exhausting. When you see other people during results, interact politely but minimally. Don’t waste energy there, either. Some people will be overstimulated; now is not the time to empathize. Focus on saving energy. Focus on your project. Focus on why you are at the audition. Have a quick warmup ready for a short amount of time before the next round. Don’t spend any energy on whether you have good or bad luck. (I used to always have to play first, and I hated it, and it was so extreme that other people I’d seen at finals commented on it during subsequent auditions. I let this distract me until I was ready to win; then I didn’t care what number they assigned me. Go ahead, make me play first. I’m prepared and I would like to be heard and I don’t really care when or how many times.) Think about things that have distracted you—the people on the circuit who say weird stuff, the people who intimidate you, the people you’ve dated and broken up with, your own physical and mental challenges—and expect them all. Don’t be surprised. Surprise is a focus changer and an energy suck. Expect all the worst stuff and plan to let it go right past you without caring so you don’t let it take a drop of your energy for the actual audition.
MANAGE YOUR BETA-BLOCKER. Do not overmedicate. Some people love beta-blockers but they can make you tired. If conserving energy is one of the main goals on the audition day be sure your beta-blocker is not making you tired. Take as small a dose as possible as late as possible. I used to think it was a good idea to take it early in the day to manage my feelings before an audition, but then I wasn’t really controlling the amount of beta-blocker very precisely. Several times I used it and played for friends and couldn’t understand why my arms wouldn’t move. This didn’t make me feel confident! Hormonal changes (notably pregnancy and nursing) and other medications can change the potency of beta-blockers. Figure out how much to take and when, and plan smartly. Be sure you have it in your system for roughly the time you are expected to play. Personally, I am of the opinion that it is better to have too little than too much in my system. It’s best, of course, to have the right amount.
RISE TO THE OCCASION. If they ask you to play something you didn’t expect, plan to PLAY IT GREAT—don’t be thrown! You may also be asked to sight-read. Look at it, think about it, (you’ve probably already played it sometime!) plan for what’s tricky, create a list of your musical priorities, and GIVE IT A WHIRL. One time I forgot about one of the excerpts (oh my!) and one time they just asked for a place in a symphony that I hadn’t ever been asked to play. I knew both of them very well so I played them and it went just fine. When this happens it doesn’t need to be terminal for your audition. Again, manage the thing in front of you. You can do it!