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I’m now sitting in La Guardia Airport waiting for my flight to Houston.  (Notice the theme of waiting in airports.)  I had my audition yesterday with the New York Youth Symphony.  I’m very excited about how it went.  I had a great conversation today with another conductor, Ankush Bahl.  It’s funny because you do these auditions, but you spend a lot of time waiting to find out what happened.  (It’s also very difficult because sometimes you run into a job that you REALLY want badly because you feel it’s a great fit or it’s a great step – for those keeping score at home, I really feel like the NYYS is a great fit, so the wait has already been interesting). 

A conductor basically has to develop the mindset of auditioning, and forgetting.  I’ve been to auditions/competitions where people were highly disappointed with the results.  (And I confess to having been at the point where I was highly disappointed with the result, though more often than not, the frustration is really because an extra-musical or an extra-audition force entered the decision-making process.  For example, I remember one time when the proctor of the audition instructed me to go out and conduct until the music director asked me to stop and rehearse.  I conducted through quite a good bit of the excerpt (while it was falling apart around my ears) and kept wondering why I wasn’t being stopped.  The music director came up to me, stopped me and said, “Why didn’t you stop?  Didn’t you notice all the mistakes that were happening?”  It was a shame because I had been following the “rules” of the audition, but I was penalized for it.  Then, the proctor came back to the candidate’s waiting room with me and said, “I apologize, you need to simply rehearse as you see fit.  Please do not wait for the music director to stop you.”)  Those situations leave you frustrated (no doubt).  But at a certain point when a conductor becomes increasingly confident of his/her technique, podium presence, preparation, and ability, it becomes almost necessary to reach the point where one can audition and then forget about it. 

A lot of the selection process revolves around the opinions of (usually) non-conductors.  Sometimes that means that they may not understand why you may rehearse one thing and leave another in a rehearsal.  (We conductors often leave certain things for the orchestra to fix themselves because a lot of the time, we have the wonderful joy of working with HIGHLY trained musicians who KNOW that they just made a mistake somewhere.  Pointing it out really won’t help the situation.  Granted if it happens a second/third time, you have to address it.)  Sometimes, the jury is more interested in the most dramatic conductor, not realizing that while the gestures may be dramatic, the size or the ferocity of the gesture gets in the way of the orchestra.  Sometimes it all works out and the best conductor gets selected.  Sometimes it works out that the “second best” conductor is the best fit for the orchestra at that time for a number of reasons that we candidates may not be privy to.  It could be that the top two conductors were both fine and that the second best conductor (who would do a great job on the podium) has gifts with outreach, programming and fundraising.  Given all that, it’s a difficult profession in that the auditions never seem “fair.”  (Sometimes they don’t even seem fair when you were the one selected! – I have a friend who was in an audition and told me that he won, but he felt that another conductor who auditioned was better and had a great audition.) 

 

Given all that, it becomes necessary to learn to deal with the audition process.

And to do that, you have to learn to “forget.”  You audition, you do the best you can, you do the usual follow ups, and then you forget and let the chips fall where they may.  Oddly, it gets easier as you become more experienced.  I find that my family and friends are always more anxious than me post-audition.  (Sorry guys!)

All that being said, and no matter how the audition turns out: I enjoyed the audition with the NYYS.  I felt like the orchestra has a lot of potential.  (And it’s funny how you work with them for 28 minutes in an audition and you already begin to catalogue how you would go about working with them).  The potential of the youth orchestra is undeniable.  I also felt like the interview(s) were great.  The questions they asked were very fair, and I felt like they had a great idea of what they were looking for in their next music director, and they also knew some of the important issues they needed to confront with the candidates.  (At least with me…  I didn’t see the other candidates!)   In other words, I feel like the decision they make will be a thoughtful, fair decision to find a person who will fit the exact needs they perceive the orchestra has.  That being said, I hope it’s me!