New Adventures!

My "audition binder of life" is organized by composer and then by piece. Commonly appearing excerpts have their own category. Ex. Schumann Scherzo

Hello, again! As I warned in my first blog post, I'm notoriously bad about updating a blog. I've had success keeping a handwritten journal for years, but timely blogging is a skill that I still need to develop! At any rate, I had many of my plans shift quite a bit over the summer. However, now that I've had a chance to organize my life and settle down, it's time to get all of you up to speed.
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The unaccompanied recital that I had planned on presenting this summer ended up being postponed for a number of reasons. Most important of those was the need to focus on orchestral excerpts to prepare for a number of orchestra auditions. Going to the Marrowstone Music Festival helped me greatly in my preparations for auditions and strengthened my confidence in my orchestral playing abilities. It was a joy and honor to work with such fantastic faculty members, conductors, and peers. Their stories and lessons were not only amusing, but also full of wisdom. One of the most useful parts of Marrowstone was a masterclass given by trombonist, Joseph Rodriguez, on how to take orchestra auditions. His packet of tips, strategies, and other useful information helped me get organized and develop a game plan for the auditions I've taken this fall. I applied two tips right away after getting back from Marrowstone. The first was to finally organize my excerpts beyond paper-clipping the various pieces together and throwing them in a folder haphazardly, and put them in a binder. From there, I used post-it tabs to color code the excerpts for each audition. The second was to create a list of all the excerpts in my binder and track how well I know them, how many auditions I've played them on, and what supporting materials I have for each excerpt. By taking the time to catalog the excerpts, I've realized that I've worked through quite a few of them many times, but have little actual audition experience on many of them. That's been changing this fall!

After all the audition preparation, I've had three auditions in less than four weeks. It's been quite a season for road trips and quick turn arounds, but I've learned a lot about how to focus and prepare myself to take an audition. While all of the auditions have been successful to a degree (since I learned something useful from each one), I'm happy to announce that I won a position with the Amarillo Symphony in their first violin section! Next week will be my first time playing with that organization and I look forward to making beautiful music with them. 

Aside form my orchestral life, I have other musical developments in the works as well. I'm currently seeking more students and attempting to be even more creative as I share music with them. Additionally, I've had a bit of a brain child involving the postponed unaccompanied recital, but I'm still working out the details. I can say that, while it will remain an unaccompanied recital, the aim has shifted slightly. As I work out more details, I'll share more about this project! 

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