How do you win an orchestra audition? Read on for my advice…

I have been a tenured member of the Los Angeles Philharmonic for the last 30 years and I have served on many, many audition committees.

In that time, I've noticed some patterns among the people who play great auditions.

Specifically, there are five things we ALWAYS hear in a great audition:

I usually write my blogs with YOU in mind. But today, I'm writing for someone else. I'm writing this for my wonderful wife, Stacy.

Tonight, Stacy is retiring after a long and wonderful career in the first violin section of the LAPhil. Since we're on tour, our last LAPhil concert is in the Barbican Centre in London, and we'll probably be done by the time you read this.

On the Barbican stage tonight, I'll be feeling a thousand emotions. I have such gratitude for the musical/life journey I've shared with Stacy for the last 38 years (eight with the SF Symphony and 30 with the LAPHIL I am sad that we have reached our final concert together, but my sadness is balanced by the knowledge of how happy Stacy is to move forward to this next chapter of her life.

I love coaching people who are developing their abilities as performers.

Most of my clients are in that no-man's-land between their advanced degrees and their first orchestra job. I work to give them the ladder to climb, rung by rung, so they can improve faster than they ever did alone.

My goal is for them to perform their best on the day of their performance/audition. The "ladder rungs" I help people climb come in the form of regular mindset strengthening and technical growth through innovative practice methods.

On April 23, 1910, American President Theodore Roosevelt delivered a speech in Paris. He shared stories of his own colorful history and how he believed we could make the world a better place. Importantly, he warned against cynicism, explaining how it can dissuade people from attempting and achieving great things.

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You may already know the speech—“The Woman/Man in The Arena"—but it's always worth revisiting Roosevelt's message of resilience and grit. As a student at the US Naval Academy, my son had to memorize this speech in his freshman year. Eight years later, he can still recite it from memory.

Last week, I was talking to my sister-in-law, Cynthia Phelps, the principal violist of the NY Philharmonic. At one point, I asked Cynthia what the NY Philharmonic looks for when hiring new violists. Her answer was amazing:

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​"We look for artistic endurance. We might have an 8pm concert one night, and a 10am rehearsal the next day. You know, we're all tired, and I don't think Bruckner intended for his symphonies to be played four nights in a row. But we have to bring the same energy, and love, and complete commitment to artistry to every single performance and rehearsal.”

One of the best parts of my job is that every week, I am enveloped in a cocoon of beautiful sounds.

This past week, the LAPhil performed Don Quixote by Richard Strauss. As you probably know, this amazing work has huge parts for the principal cellist and violist. Robert deMaine (our principal cello) and Teng Li (our principal viola) were extraordinary. But what was most notable for me was their sound.

During the concerts, I was awash in their resonance, diversity of colors, and pure beauty. It's not an understatement to say I felt like I was being nourished by the experience. Does that sound silly? Think of it this way...

I've got some students taking the San Diego symphony audition in a few weeks, and they're thinking a lot about the acoustics of the hall. The Balboa Theatre is medium/large in size, with fairly dry acoustics. What does this mean for my students? What would it mean for you?

If we can understand the degree of reverb, the clarity of projection etc., it will greatly affect our musical choices, such as our choices of articulation for excerpts like the Mendelssohn Scherzo or Mozart's Haffner Symphony. Short, long, melodic, horizontal...all of these things depend a lot on the hall.

Do you have any idea of the acoustical environment of your next audition or performance? It is worth some investigation. Bring a friend to give feedback on how it sounds or bring a recording device. Can you find a similar space in terms of size and acoustics for you mock auditions?

Last week, I told you about my long, viola-free vacation and the impact it had on my playing. For me, spiccato is one of the first skills to degrade when I take time off.​

I already know this, and I created my a daily maintenance schedule for spiccato years ago. I can't tell you what a difference it makes in my professional life!

​But I don't just practice a generic spiccato. There are three primary spiccatos that we use as orchestral players.

Do your playing skills have a shelf life?

YES!

I took the last two weeks away from the viola and it almost killed me. My wife and I traveled first to Hawaii for ten days and then to Illinois for five days to visit our kids and their families. It was an amazing vacation, and my wife insisted that we NOT take our instruments.

As you know, I am a practicer—I find NOT practicing very difficult! I don't ever take much time off from practice, and I don't remember EVER leaving my instrument behind for two weeks.

"Make every note a pearl." Has someone said this to you? Let's think about what this might mean.​

Before CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), each individual frame in a full-length, animated movie had to be individually drawn and painted by an “army” of animators.​

To understand the magnitude of these projects, let's do some math:

The movie Snow White is an 83-minute feature.

There are 24 frames per second, for a total of 119,500 frames.

Each frame is a standalone work of art. So the studio had to produce almost 120,000 works of art to complete the visuals for the movie.

When I was a violin performance major at Indiana University, I studied with Tadeusz Wronski. In my lesson one day, I played the first movement of the Mozart G major Violin Concerto. When I finished, Mr. Wronski said, “Your Kreutzer etude is very good.”

I was dumbfounded. After a second, I commented, “But Mr. Wronski, that was Mozart…?”

He explained that it even though it was very clean and accurate, my concerto had sounded more like a Kreutzer etude. Mr. Wronski finished his comments with this advice: "don’t wait for your technique to be perfect to play musically."

I recently arranged for my three-year-old grandson Harold to visit a fire station. Harold is obsessed with firefighters and fire trucks. He owns his own firefighter coat, pants, and helmet.​

When we got to the fire station, he ran to each and every corner of the giant fire truck. He was in heaven, and his enthusiasm and joy were contagious!

​Afterwards, I thought—can I bottle this ingredient of pure joy? Can I use it in my musical life, and can I share it with the people that I coach?

I know I talk about visualization a lot, so today I wanted to take a moment and share with you 3 stories that will hammer how powerful it has been in my life.

​Story 1

My first experiences with visualization came as a 14 year old sophmore in high school. I was a varsity basketball player and my coach was way ahead of his time in so many ways in developing us as players and people. He regularly used visualization techniques in our final practice of each week. As a team we would sit as a team in the locker room before our Friday and Saturday night games. Coach Tikker would talk us through each game.

One of the most high pressure situations that I have ever been in was when I competed in the Lionel Tertis International Viola Competition. It was in the UK on the Isle of Man. I had prepared for this competition for four months. I had gone to great expense to get to the Isle of Man. I had prepared the required 3 full recital programs. I really wanted to represent myself well.

My wife and I had taught at a summer music camp in Massachusetts right before the competition. As we were saying goodbye in the Logan Airport, my wife grabbed both of my shoulders and said, "You have worked so hard for this. Don't let ANYTHING distract you from doing your best." They were such wise and prescient words.

1. Always listen to tension on your bow when you're done playing.

2. Always listen to tension on your bow when you've shipped the bow or traveled by air with it: your bow will be extra loose (and your string tension will be loosened as well). This is because of the extremely dry air on airplanes.

3. Use a washable, microfiber, or other soft cloth to wipe your bow stick, frog, and button each time you're done playing. This protects the pearl and other finishes from moisture and rosin buildup. Pearl is becoming a scarce commodity so it's easily preserved for far longer with that simple practice.

4. As soon as your thumb leather is worn down to the stick, replace it immediately. This way you don't wear a divot in the bow's handle. Deep thumb divots in bow handles structurally compromise the bow.

This week's email is a little different than usual. It's a more intimate look at what it's like to be a part of a big orchestra tour.

And before I get into all the details, I just want to share this thought. When you can imagine exactly what it is that you want (for example, being in an orchestra that goes on tours), then it's easy to incorporate it into your visualization exercises, which in turn, helps you grow your focus and work towards that dream. So here is something to add to your visualization!

When we first moved here to the San Gabriel Valley, an elderly gentleman came up to me and asked if I was interested in being taught how to plant tomatoes in this area. My answer was of course!

He asked, "What are you doing tomorrow morning at 5:30?"

And I responded, "I guess I'm meeting with you to learn how to plant tomatoes in this area."

Let’s talk about performance anxiety.

It’s very common, but we don’t talk enough about it. I can write you a whole email about why I think it is…but also…I’d rather give you some tips to how I deal with it.

So here’s a case study - an actual audition that I had. In fact, one of my best ones (though I didn’t get the job!)

As we embark on what feels like the last week of work for the year, let's draw inspiration from the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau: 

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

In the spirit of simplification, let's apply this philosophy to our practice routines and musical journeys. 

As we embark on what feels like the last week of work for the year, let's draw inspiration from the wisdom of Henry David Thoreau: 

"As you simplify your life, the laws of the universe will be simpler; solitude will not be solitude, poverty will not be poverty, nor weakness weakness."

In the spirit of simplification, let's apply this philosophy to our practice routines and musical journeys.