My percussionist puts a lightweight (thin, microfiber type) towel on top of his practice pad and can play in the room. Works well.
Another tip my kid’s teacher gave him, was to run up and down the stairs a few times and then play. The fast heart rate simulates nerves.
This is a bit off the current topic, but it relates to auditions. We’re east coast so nowhere near LA, but does anyone have info about if or how all those fires may affect auditions or travel? I’m thinking USC and Colburn specifically - our audition date is in less than a month. I assume hotels in the area must be filling fast simply due to people needing a place to go.
We went ahead and booked a room at the hotel on USC’s campus as soon as we found out he passed the prescreen. There may still be room there. The fires are not too close to USC right now and all the messaging I have seen is that classes and such are expected to continue as scheduled.
You are brave. DD will go to 4 auditions in-person. We had to draw the line there to keep our sanity. I actually came on here to see if anyone had heard from Bard yet. We’re still waiting. Their projected date bumps up against our ASO weekend and it’s going to be interesting getting there weather permitting.
Tell him airplanes since Covid have improved flight conditions, that unlike in the past they change the air in the plane quite a bit, so it isn’t quite the germ factory it once was because there is constant fresh air brought in.
After that it is trying to be as cautious as possible. Wear an n95 mask will help decrease risk. On the plane, try not to touch things like the tray table or armrest as much as possible and carry disinfecting wipes (if they allow them on the plane) and use them often. When waiting in the airport (which quite frankly is another source of infection), try to stay away from other people even if masked (may not be possible, obviously), as much as possible and be careful what you touch, keep your hands clean as possible.
I would also tell him to try not and obsess about it, I honestly believe when you do that, you get into an emotional state that helps depress your immune system.
Obvious things, make sure you are getting enough sleep and eating well, living on junk food and lack of sleep is a good way to suppress your immune system IME. Music students I know in audition period are cramming in a lot of practice, and thus not sleeping, and it works against you.
We are in LA (between downtown and Pasadena, closer to Pasadena). Downtown (Colburn) is not affected, though LA Opera and LA Phil postponed performances due to many local staff, orchestra members, etc being affected. They are both located directly across the street from Colburn.
USC students return to campus for Spring semester next week and they are currently staying on schedule but taking it day by day. That area is not in the vicinity of either fire.
I would hope that by next month things will be contained and (somewhat at least) back to normal in areas not affected but good to keep an eye on each school’s website for announcements.
People have already responded to “how to stay healthy while traveling”. Just two things to add:
1.). It could happen that he has to cancel an audition and submit a recording for his audition. You’ll need to work with the school if he needs to cancel. Students get accepted every year from recordings and faculty is very aware of this issue. I will hope that it doesn’t happen…but it could…and “all is not lost”. He could still get an acceptance to that school through a recorded audition with an explanation to the school of the cancellation due to illness.
2.). If he is no longer contagious but his voice is still have some issues at the upper or lower registry (usually the issue after an illness) but he can make some beautiful sounds for the majority of the song in the middle registry, he can still audition. Faculty can often hear around those issues. These people are “experts” on the voice and have faced many similar challenges with travel and illness. They should also have his prescreen. Without telling them, they will most likely pick out what’s going on…and excuse it. Remember they want your kid to succeed so they will be OK with a less than perfect audition due to a cold…as long as they can hear some of his voice.
I hope this helps your son to reduce the stress (a contributor to illness). There is always a way to work around an illness and still be considered by the school!!
Edit: of course check with his private teacher to assure that he can sing safely. He wouldn’t want to do anything to damage his voice…but in most cases, kids have had to work around this in the past.
The scheduling is insane, isn’t it? We will have one weekend with IU, Oberlin, and CIM, one with Eastman and CMU, and then Juilliard is a stand-alone on a Friday.
We’re also trying to minimize missed days of school because they are able to exempt their final exams if they stay under a certain number of absences. She’s missed 3 days for YoungArts this week, so now we’re debating whether it’s really worth going to Juilliard a day early to rehearse with the accompanist or if it’s ok to fly in the night before and cross our fingers that the accompanist is really great and follows well. She’s done several competitions recently with really fantastic accompanists, so I’m kind of leaning toward just trusting that the pianist will be a rock star, and everything will go great even without a rehearsal.
Regarding attendance, you may want to ask the school if there’s attendance recovery option. I teach in a Texas public high school. There’re at least five different ways students can recover absences. They can stay with any teacher or counselor outside their regular class schedule and log the time as attendance recovery. If a student misses 8 periods of my computer science class, they can stay with the band director (who always gets to school very early) for 6 hours and they no longer has absences for comp sci. They can sit in the band hall during their lunch period to recover attendance.
Mine used travel humidifier in hotels. We traveled for 4 weekends in a row and she was able to stay healthy. Also make sure they eat and sleep well.
For my daughter’s auditions last year in most cases she met her accompanist for the first time a few minutes before the audition, conversed quickly about the pieces and go with no practice. No issues. I am sure Julliard’s accompanists are top notch.
Thanks, that’s definitely something to look into! I was thinking it seems awfully unfair for the kids who are missing school for legitimate reasons that reflect well on the school (YoungArts) but are not specifically school sponsored, and for the fine arts kids who don’t have a choice but to audition on the days the schools say they have to audition. And don’t even get me started on how they get 2 excused college visit days FOR THE WHOLE YEAR. Although, I know they won’t count the absences as unexcused or anything - just that they might count them against her finals, even though the kid gets straight As.
I’ll email her counselor next week and see if there is anything we can do about the absences. She’s also going to have to miss the last day of school for the national Schmidt competition but I think by then the seniors are already completely done, so hopefully that won’t be an issue, even if she does end up having to take some finals.
For youngarts I believe it can be justified as school business so the absence doesn’t count. I remember some students missing my class for a competition they entered independently but since it was directly related to one of their capstone course, after some discussion it was logged as school business excused absence.
In Texas, the state says if a student warm body is not physically on campus or on a school sponsored activity off campus, the school is not serving this student, thus should lose funding. When the school serves this student some other time beyond what’s allotted on their schedule, the funding is back.
I was told at our high school that college visits and auditions! are not excused. This seems to be a ridiculous policy to me. It sounds like we are an outlier in that most schools at least don’t call them unexcused?
yeah… due to the very high cost of travel there from the east coast, it stinks to have to spend so much money on flight, uber, missed school, missed work, and hotel to go to a place that, frankly, will probably still be reeling from the effects of the fire. I don’t know how long it will go on, but even if the fires go out, it’s not exactly a place that should be getting tourists in the next few weeks - spend $1500K+ to visit LA just for an audition? Seems wrong unless the professor truly can’t figure out from videos how to rank the kids. They don’t need tourists right now.
I’m thinking of one of the 2 schools specifically… the professor there knows my kid (he’s visited the school and professor before), has his videos, and I’m sure can figure out from videos how to rank his applicants. It shouldn’t take $1500+ and travel to a warzone to give us the answer that really shouldn’t be different whether we do or do not show up in person. He knows who the applicants are and how they sound. Why can’t these schools just make some offers based on that? I just wish they’d make virtual audition an option. It was done during covid when everything shut down if a person had covid within 10 blocks of you, but now with these awful fires and air quality and people losing everything, it’s “full steam ahead we’re fully open you’d better get back to campus, etc.” So frustrating.
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I was told at our high school that college visits and auditions! are not excused. This seems to be a ridiculous policy to me. It sounds like we are an outlier in that most schools at least don’t call them unexcused?
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Oh, yeah, that’s a dumb policy. How on earth do you visit colleges if you can’t miss school at all? They’re closed on most of the same days the public schools are closed, so if you ever want to be able to take a tour or whatever, you have to miss school. And while some of the schools have weekend audition dates, others, like Juilliard, IU, and Eastman, only have weekday auditions, so you just have to go when they tell you.
My daughter is at USC and they are going back on Monday. USC is not near any fires and is not affected other than air quality.
My younger son missed 14 days of school each year in hs due to both illness, college visits, auditions and competitions. We got a lot of letters but since he was on top of things there was never an issue. They did allow 2 college visits as excused each year.
That’s just crazy! All of my son’s visits and auditions were excused junior and senior year…also things like Young Arts, NAfME nationals, All State, etc. I would def question/challenge this
We live in one of the biggest US cities and my kids both attend public schools. Every single college visit and audition was counted as unexcused. Even things that were school-adjacent, like performing at elementary schools in the same district, were unexcused. My youngest got unexcused absences for state science fair as well. It’s insane.