This level of shadiness has been present in their auditions for as long as I can remember. A significant percentage of their recent audition winners received auto advances to later rounds sometimes even to the finals. I even heard from a reliable source there, that in one instance the final round of an audition was postponed because one of the candidates was “sick”…. that orchestra really makes me question the point of paying into the union when stuff like this happens and I know a lot of people up here share similar feelings. It’s must be hard living in the shadow of Toronto and Montreal…
I disagree with your recommendation. It may very well be a smart idea to save some money and time in the short term, and you may have even extracted real information from what you perceive to be an orchestra's hiring patterns (you may find looking at an orchestra's CBA useful here as it contains all the info you need about audition procedure), however not doing the audition is poor advice if you want the job. To summarize: you have made the recommendation to not audition for certain orchestras. I am making the recommendation of: if you want the gig, you shoud do the audition.
This level of shadiness has been present in their auditions for as long as I can remember. A significant percentage of their recent audition winners received auto advances to later rounds sometimes even to the finals. I even heard from a reliable source there, that in one instance the final round of an audition was postponed because one of the candidates was “sick”…. that orchestra really makes me question the point of paying into the union when stuff like this happens and I know a lot of people up here share similar feelings. It’s must be hard living in the shadow of Toronto and Montreal…