Auditions

Last Saturday I had the wonderfully exciting privilege of auditioning for all-state. I actually do not believe that it is a good thing to be allowed to try out, because auditions are quite possibly the most frightening thing on this planet. I hate them with a very large passion.

About five weeks before the real thing, Ms. Fleer made anyone that wanted to try out do a pre-audition try out, in order to wean out the runts of the school and to give those that pass a better chance of making the final audition. That was scary enough as it is, because at that time I had barely begun to practice and was still pretty horrible at the music. Thankfully, due to last year where I made recalls, Ms. Fleer told me that it was fine if I didn't do the thing with her. Saved! It was quite the wonderful feeling.

My all-state time was 3:20, so I got to Oelwine around 2:00 and started to warm up and prepare. I was really nervous because I felt a lot less prepared than the year before. When I practiced my solo part I actually had to stop once, and go back because I got so screwed up that I just couldn't go on anymore. It was very disheartening. I went to my room a few minutes early just in case they were running on time, and turns out they weren't. After all of my warming up and preparing I had to sit and wait for 20 minutes. Absolutely perfect for de-warming and not concentrating. Oliver Jorge and I sat and played games on my iPod for awhile and then finally, and unexpectedly, it was my turn to go. I walked into the room and said hello to the judge, who said hello back pleasantly enough. This would turn out to be the only pleasant thing she would say or do throughout the entire experience.


I screwed up my solo a little bit and it made me sad especially since the judge said she had heard of the song. Its called Divertissement by Pierre Max Dubois. Who's heard of that song anyway? She must have very little in her life to keep her interesting. That's all I have to say on that matter.

Then came the etudes that we had to have prepared. I played both of them without any major mistake and was feelin' pretty good. The slow one was super good sounding in my opinion, I didn't have that nervous spazzy vibrato problem like I have had in the past.

I picked F# as one of the scales on my little card, and F# is definitely my worst scale. Thankfully I contrived (isn't that a neat little word) to play it note perfect at the properly fast tempo so I felt pretty good.

I went back to the gym after playing my scales to wait for the sign. When it got posted I had oliver jorge look for me and I didn't get a recall this year. Darn! I actually wasn't sad because I just really wanted to leave that gym full of obnoxious band lovers.