Honor Group Auditions

Today the district I teach in held auditions for its honor groups, and I helped adjudicate the clarinets and saxophones.

I am always interested in the variety of ability levels of the students who audition. Some are very well-prepared and have obviously spent hours practicing and working with private instructors. Then there are the few who are totally unprepared, and the judges are left wondering, “Why the heck did you bother coming if you can’t even attempt the music?!” My hunch is that those students have parents who saw a handout with info about the auditions and told the kid, “You’re going whether you want to or not!”

Do you have thoughts about the audition process, either as an adjudicator or as a teacher? What is your process for preparing your students? What criteria sets apart two players of comparable ability? (I know one teacher who values intonation above all else; others prioritize tone.) Any interesting stories to share?

Essential Elements Correlated Music

I’m a big fan of the band music which is correlated with specific pages of method books like Essential Elements. Selecting pieces from these collections has made my job a little easier in that I know in advance if my young players are familiar with the concepts and fingerings involved in the piece.

Here are some titles from the Explorer Level which I have had success with:

The Lost City

Bugler’s Dream (Olympic Fanfare)

Dragonfire. A fellow music teacher recently told me that one of my former students told him she had played this piece with my group and she wanted to play it again his band. You know it’s a favorite when this happens!

March of the Romans

Here are some titles from the Performer Level which I have had success with:

Linus and Lucy

Day-O

Feliz Navidad

Forrest Gump

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Yabba Dabba Fragilistic

This week I had my bands sight read an easy arrangement of Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. At one of my three schools, less than half of the students knew where the title came from. At my two other more affluent schools, there were also several students who didn’t have a clue.

On a similar note, one of my private students brought in her part to a jazz band arrangement of The Flintstones. I asked her if she had ever seen the show, and she said no. When I asked her about Fruity Pebbles cereal (Fred and Barney are on the box), she made the connection. But there was still no real familiarity with the theme song.

So much for choosing music the kids already like.