Live Audition Curveballs

onette
Mon, 06 Jan 2020 19:56:44 +0000

One of my kids had an accompanist STOP PLAYING at NTDA auditions about 15 seconds into the song. He was shaken and truly believed he would get no callbacks, but in the end, I think he got 37 that night (out of 54 schools?). One of the theatre directors I knew who was there told me that the accompanist had been making things “painful” all day and that the student handled it very well (where some students hadn’t). I had worked with him about how to work with accompanists that you have never gotten to work with prior. The adjudicators can tell what’s going on. But your reaction to what happens is everything. One of the biggest issues is that most of the students have no experience “leading” the accompanist before their auditions. The accompanist should be following them, not the opposite. So, bottom line - if you have any thing “special” (like tempo changes or cuts), please mark it WELL. Try to get a modified version of the music so that they don’t have to wade through marks and crossed-out sections (I use Adobe Acrobat Pro and actually edit the music there!). I strongly suggest to my students to tap out and sing the beginning of the song to the accompanist quietly if they can. We have learned that marking tempo sometimes isn’t enough. (One accompanist this year turned “The Kite” into a ballad! Even though the tempo was clearly marked). But you have to remember they are doing song after song with various marks, styles, re-imagined arrangements, etc. So treat it like they have never seen the song before and be clear with the direction.