Auditions are a joke. Major orchestras will field hundreds of applicants and leave positions open for years at a time. Each of us spends hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars preparing for auditions that might only hear five minutes of playing. We, as musicians, are told that this is just the way it is. Competition is fierce, it's a honor to even play in a famous hall, etc. etc.
It could be better though. It's so painfully obvious, but no one seems to talk about that.
Here are some immediate ideas - maybe you disagree with some, but I think in general these are easy fixes that should be no-brainers.
1) Only ask people to travel if they have a serious shot - every orchestra should be doing remote prescreening. If you are worried about fraud (which I think is overhyped), have a screened zoom call in which the personnel manager confirms their identity. With the money orchestras could save by not hosting the circuses that are first round auditions, maybe they could actually fly candidates out for a semi final/final and house them as would literally any other job that is interviewing people.
2) Limit total number of excerpts on lists/limit total number of non-standard excerpts on lists - What is the utility of an hour long list? Or a two hour long list? Their existence implies that too many people are playing winning auditions with just the standard stuff. But if that is true, why are there so many no-hires? Curious if there is actually an argument for anything beyond 10 excerpts, select solo rep, chamber music, and sight reading.
3) Vacancies must be filled - No longer than one year, no longer than two years, idk the right time frame. If you aren't getting the caliber of candidate you want, pay the musicians more. Some orchestras just leave vacancies open to save their bottom lines. Regular subs go on unemployment during the summer to make ends meet. This is no way to live.
The fact of the matter is that musicians who are trying to get into orchestras are the most vulnerable people in our field. We have no rights, and we routinely get treated like absolute trash. Why aren't musicians' unions regulating hiring behaviors? Why aren't tenured musicians advocating for better practices? We are all on the same team, when it comes down to it, and we should look out for one another.
Re: screening of candidates: I think a more intensive screening of resumes could go a long way to preventing people from wasting their money. At an audition I attended last year for a Big Fancypants Orchestra, there were fewer than 15 candidates. For an orchestra that has the reputation and the compensation package to attract candidates of the highest caliber, that seems to actually be a pretty reasonable number.
But that raises the question: is it the orchestra's responsibility to prevent candidates from wasting their own money? From the committee's perspective, if a resume is borderline, they might as well give the candidate a shot—after all, it only takes them 10 minutes to consider one more person. It's us as the applicants who have to invest weeks of preparation and hundreds of dollars, and therefore it's up to us as candidates to determine if that investment is worthwhile. If the orchestras won't dissuade more applicants from coming to the audition, then that leaves the responsibility on applicants to better screen themselves.
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As for the general audition disillusionment: I think people who are disillusioned with the process could benefit from reckoning with the fact that while there is randomness in auditions, there is less randomness than they think. If you're really qualified, a prelim is a minor hurdle to not really worry about. Occasionally the committee might be exceptionally picky, or you might have a bad day and play a round you know isn't good enough, but when you don't advance out of a prelim you should be able to point to a pretty clear reason why.
It seems to me that most of the candidates who win auditions have become qualified by playing with orchestras of that caliber (or better) as substitutes, or by winning and holding a position with an orchestra just a step down. If you're not yet setting yourself apart as qualified, the best way to develop your skills is by playing with people who are better than you, which means working your way up as a freelancer. Gigging and the audition circuit create a virtuous cycle.
Put in a snarky way: if you're so qualified, and these long term sub contracts are so ubiquitous, why don't you have one?
We should do a general strike of auditions. I'm not even joking. Statistically speaking only one or two people stand to gain financially from going to any given audition anyways. The rest of us lose thousands even if we just take 1 or 2 a year. I'm in my 30s and way too old to be taking auditions "for the experience". I've had enough. I want money, or at the very least, an equitable and transparent audition process.
That is not even taking into account the emotional toll. Preparing for an audition is one of the most a-musical and crushing process we as artists have to endure. After a certain point, there is little if anything that is rewarding about it and we've been brainwashed to believe we have enjoy the process. Plus, the rampant misogyny and racism has disillusioned so many wonderful musicians. I have so many friends who are women who consistently will get to the (super)final round of (very prominent) auditions and then the screen comes down and for some reason, if there's a man in the round, it pretty much always goes their way (or a no-hire!)
Orchestras have faced absolutely zero consequences for what basically amounts to abuse of the work force. What exactly are we all doing this for when a section violin audition for the Philadelphia Orchestra ends in a no-hire? Enough is enough. Collective action is the only way forward. I do not want to go through another one of these when most of the people in charge on the other side last took an audition during the Clinton presidency.
Ok also **** is me misspelling shot just fyi
Clearly the current hiring process needs to be tweaked, and I agree with both of you. I do think it is worth noting that a big benefit on the pros column of blind auditions is that it is one of the most fair ways to hire someone that exists in any field. What happens before or after that aside, blind auditions were one of the best things implemented in the orchestra world in the 20th century.
i think that recorded prelims are a great way to let people know if they even have a real **** at winning, so they should probably be used more. That being said, it is kind of incredible to me how many people don’t get past recorded rounds. I know players that have gone in to their next audition and made finals who didn’t get past recorded prelim for the previous audition of an orchestra of a similar level. Would be interested to know why people think this is. Could it be recording quality or just less time to prepare ? I don’t really know.
as for the financial side of things, to sort of play devils advocate , I feel that this field is a high risk high reward one. Of course, it is MUCH easier to become a classical musician if you come from money and a privileged demographic - I would never suggest the opposite. I will say that once it gets to the level where you are in the audition circuit , it seems the majority of us are not making much money at all and are often overextending our finances to stay on the audition circuit. I have always accepted that as just a truth of trying to pull off a career that very few people are able to do. You have to accept that risk going into it, and it shouldn’t be too much of a surprise.
BUT - that ideology only makes sense if when you get to the audition they actually hire someone. Ans these days that seems Decreasingly to be the case.
anyways that’s my two cents no one asked for .
You raise some interesting points. Here is my take:
1) more recorded prelims/smaller candidate pools for live auditions - I think we will start seeing this more often, as we’re already seeing it at conservatories, training orchestras such as New World, and festivals. But I worry that it’s already difficult enough for a student just starting out to even get invited to auditions, let alone progress to a final round and maybe win one. It could really damage equity in our field as well, by further favoring a player with access to a nice recording space, quality mics and software, and higher quality instruments (this matters a lot more for percussion). If orchestras held a recorded prelim that was cattle-call (literally anyone can send a tape), that may allow them to hear a lot more candidates than they otherwise could. However that’s a lot more time/money spent by the audition committee to listen to all of those, and orchestras don’t like to spend more money.
2) I think longer & less standard rep lists are a direct result of the extremely high level of performance across the industry. Technical and musical training is better than ever, there are more resources available to help auditioners, more mental training than ever before. So if orchestras only ask 10 standard excerpts then they’ll hear a LOT of people play them basically perfect. Makes it harder to distinguish the best player in a crowd, but I agree that lists have gotten absurdly long and arcane.
3) Agree this is a big problem, but it comes down to each orchestras situation and would very difficult to enforce a universal hiring rule like this. No-hires are frustrating for candidates and committees alike, but there are tons of different reasons why they happen and simply saying “you have to hire someone within 2 years” doesn’t address the root problem that caused the prolonged vacancy in the first place. It also may cause another consequence, which could be more tenure denials when they rush to hire a candidate that’s not an ideal fit - personally I’d rather see a no-hire than a tenure denial, which can be devastating to a person’s career and psychology.
just my 2 cents. One of my teachers once said “Auditions are a bad way to hire people, but it’s the best way when compared to all the other bad ways”
Your point about the sheer unprofessionalism of the hiring process is spot on. In most other fields, candidates are competing against other candidates, and employers are competing against other employers. Even with screens, we see time and time again that, with some exceptions, the same candidates are winning the same tier of jobs. The only difference is that our hiring windows are much more infrequent, and we disguise our replacement for resume screening (the audition) as an interview process to which we invite more candidates who believe they are qualified than any other industry. In reality, the only interview in our field is the trial, in which there are often too few candidates to make a consensus decision to hire.
Is there some kind of better system where a group of orchestras identify a small number of qualified candidates depending on available positions nationwide, roll out the red carpet, and find the best fit for both candidate and orchestra? Or does this compromise our national commitment to democracy, openness, and diversity in hiring? It will never happen in practice, but would a central blind audition to identify such candidates for interviews be a better system than what we have now?
Hard agree. This needed to be said and thank you for saying it.
You've laid out what I (and what I imagine many others) are thinking. I've gone down the rabbit hole wondering about the same things. At the end of the day, assuming you're also someone who needs to be financially conscious, the only conclusion I could reach was that this field ultimately isn't suited for someone like you or I. From the top-down, it's geared towards people who can invest incessantly into via lessons, instruments, conservatories, festivals, etc, so why would auditions be any different? As long as people keep showing up to these auditions (whether people end up getting hired or not), there's no incentive for orchestras to change their audition procedures.