Time to think about summer!

College Majors Music Majors
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@stringbird Hi there! Congrats on the new viola teacher! I’m glad it has worked out!

First of all, I disagree with @yfgntf123 in their assessment of BUTI. My daughter who is now in conservatory had a wonderful experience and had exceptional conductors (Young Artist Orchestra session), fantastic coachings and lessons (and is still in touch with her teachers in the Boston area). Individual experiences can be so different. So, I believe it is worth the time and effort for sure, especially for the reasons we all talked about before.

Regarding live vs. recorded - many times in regional live auditions, they are recorded and then faculty listens to them later along with the submitted recordings, so everyone really is on the same footing. However, I would say that the ADVANTAGE is for recorded auditions because you can record as many times as necessary until you are happy, where as a live audition is a one time shot.

Check to see if they require piano accompaniment for recordings. This is the singular most complicated thing - paying for and scheduling a pianist. We have a wonderful resource locally and she costs tons of money but elevates my daughter’s playing so she is worth every single penny and scheduling accommodation. Make sure the pianist you hire is good. Ask other musicians in your town or your teacher.

We use a zoom camera and make digital recordings. We usually try to find a place to record with a good piano of course. Think local church (that tunes their piano regularly - and don’t be shy about asking when it was last tuned), university facilities also. Sometimes there are rental fees so that has to be taken into consideration.

We have made one recording at our pianist’s home one time. It wasn’t the best place but we were in a pinch.

If piano is not required (or for unaccompanied pieces) and you have a nice space in your home that has good sound (not dead, not too much carpet, higher ceilings, etc.) you can certainly make a nice recording at home.

If you have a high-quality phone or ipad, I think you could use them to make recordings but I would recommend a good digital video camera. It is an investment that you will use over and over again on this journey. Double check file types that are accepted. Some want digital uploads, some want YouTube links. Just double check how they want stuff.

And make sure you have a few days leeway for uploading problems (Murphy’s Law and all).

We’ve done it a million times! I was going to say it gets better, but really, audition recordings are hard and time consuming and a money drain and they can be very stressful (at least for my girl) but once you get your routine down, it at least feels more manageable. We are about to do it this winter break too! Brahms concerto for the win! Rehearsal today and recording on the 6th!

Wishing you the best! Please let me know if you have any other questions.

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Hi @yfgntf123 , I know someone who went to BUTI last year and I found their growth as a musician to be amazing. They were good before, but the artistry of their playing really blossomed. So BUTI must be doing something right for their instrument, at least.

So far my daughter has not been receptive to the idea of Meadowmount. Furthermore, having seen some of the Meadowmount violin and cello auditions on YouTube, I don’t think she could get in unless the viola competition was comparatively weak. I doubt that would be the case. I’m not above wheedling her into at least trying out for it but my hopes are quite low.

@Violinmomaz thank you for all of this information, especially regarding equipment and accompanists! The Bowdoin site says accompaniment is “encouraged but not required”. I think I’m too late getting this organized for Bowdoin by their “priority deadline” which is January 6th. I have no idea what a “priority deadline” could be. They have another, different deadline, January 31st. I like that deadline better. :slight_smile: I’ll speak with her teacher on what to do.

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Does anyone know of summer jazz workshops, US or abroad, for college students in May or early June? My S is free until mid June but will then be working full time.

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@stringbird - I went on Bowdoin’s website and asked on the chat feature (they are very responsive, I used it a lot last year) and they said that after the priority deadline, the application fee goes up so that is a consideration.

Best wishes!

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@stringbird - Meadowmount has historically had fewer violists than they need to fill quartet positions. Violinists often have their first viola experiences there after being assigned to viola to fill in gaps. My point is that although violin and cello high school applicants do tend to be advanced, that is not always the case for viola. If your D is solid, even if not incredibly advanced, she may very well be admitted.

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@Musicaspirant I 100% agree with everything you just said. The violist level varies a lot at meadowmount from high school juniors playing a sloppy Stamitz Concerto to NEC students that are in the Primrose Competition. Regardless, you get a lot of lessons and chamber music experience on top of the practice schedule and most people make LITERALLY a year’s progress in seven weeks.

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Thank you both @Musicaspirant and @yfgntf123 . I read this whole thread to my daughter and she has consented to at least audition for Meadowmount. “But I’m not agreeing to go even if I get in.” That’s totally fair and when the time comes we can worry about what she should do if admitted. That’s still a big if.

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@stringbird - I’m sure you are also talking with your D’s new teacher as to what he (she?) thinks is needed for her development. I don’t know if this would work for you with the new teacher, but here’s another option one of my older ones took on for several summers. The regular teacher gave twice weekly summer lessons to the serious members of the studio. I remember one high schooler starting the Tchaikovsky Concert (violin) in June and having 3 movements learned by August. Perhaps not competition ready quite yet, but all notes and memory down. That “home boot camp” lasted for a couple summers, then the teacher started teaching at one of the big summer festivals and took the serious students along. I think more progress was made at home!

Do you know why she is so negative on Meadowmount? Many students attend for more than a single year, can’t be all bad! It is a great place for working on individual repertoire and development but there is still socialization with the quartet aspect and social activities. Being a high schooler and hearing the college students in attendance is also a plus for many.

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smiles Well, it WAS introduced to her as “music jail”. I think it’s perfectly reasonable not to want to go to music jail. It’s easy enough for me to tell her that I, along with a bunch of strangers on the internet, think it’s a good idea / would be good for her, but I’m not the one that would actually spend the seven weeks in music jail. In addition, her teacher was not enthusiastic about the idea, for reasons that I did not ask. I imagine that pretty much sealed the judgment in my daughter’s mind.

I have not yet talked to the new teacher about summer programs. We have met only once and the lesson took priority, of course. And then after that, we had a lot of other stuff we needed to talk about. Next lesson will be a better time to discuss summer.

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Closer to full disclosure - my stepchild attended MM for 4 years. 3 in high school, one in college. Serious musician to start with and used to a heavy duty practice regimen. Never found the required practice hours out of line with the self-imposed home discipline and loved the camaraderie. (I will admit that one year was not as pleasant as the others for finding the right crowd of fellow MMers. For whatever reason, Stepchild didn’t find a good match of friends that year. I figure 3 out of 4 terrific summers and one that was OK is not a bad average!)

Stepchild is now a professional orchestral musician - mid-30s. Still meets people from MM days.

If your D wants a “fun” time with music activities, MM is probably not the answer. However, the summer experience could really help her and let her know if this is the route or not. Music jail could be a valid description of most conservatories and higher level music schools. The practice hours may not be monitored, but if your D isn’t ready to commit to many, many hours in a practice room, it may be valuable to learn that now.

Good luck - hard being a supportive parent, isn’t it!!!

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I totally agree that I’d rather she find out how she feels about the effort required now, for the cost of a summer program, than two years from now, for the cost of a year of college tuition… or later, even. I know a lot can change over the next few years and I don’t know much at all about pursuing the study of music.

And yes… supporting her without being overbearing. Making sure her decisions are thoughtful and informed, but are HERS. This is a real challenge for me. But it’s not my life.

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I wonder if you could just tell her she can apply or not apply wherever she wants, and if she isn’t certain she would attend Meadowmount, then she shouldn’t apply. I wouldn’t waste the time, money and effort unless she really wants to attend.

I also wonder, as I wrote before, if a lot of the stress of trying to play catch up with viola could be eliminated if she applied to colleges and universities that don’t have a BM program, and did music as a major within a BA and/or as extracurriculars, with lessons.

Maybe a summer at home with the new teacher would work best. It would be a chance for her to get to know the new teacher and vice-versa. Others have said their musicians progressed quite a bit with a home program.

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We were able to speak with my daughter’s new viola teacher about summer programs and we’ve come back full circle, she’ll be applying to orchestral camps: Interlochen, BUTI orchestra, Brevard, and Eastern Music Festival. The rationale was that the orchestral experience has great value for viola players in particular, and that there’s adequate private instructor time at the orchestral camps for her current needs.

The teacher sounds confident that my daughter could get into Brevard and/or EMF at her current level - or actually I should say, confident that she would easily have gotten in last year at her current level, with the caution that the level can fluctuate from year to year. That gives me some guarded relief as it’s really impossible for me to tell her level myself.

We didn’t discuss Interlochen or BUTI other than to add them to the list. The submission dates are all coming right up so we’ll see what happens.

I plan to share some sort of postmortem of our process and our results, but not for a bit. This forum is such a great resource, but I’m finding that for me personally it’s too easy to spend too much unproductive time here, even when mostly all I do is lurk. So I’m taking a break. Thanks again everyone, all the comments and advice helped tremendously.

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@stringbird, I think that’s an absolutely fantastic list of possibilities. We loved both Brevard and BUTI. Our friend’s kid did Interlochen for two years (viola/composition) and got a great deal out of it. Eastern MF we haven’t attended but have corresponded with Melissa Edwards (admissions) there and she’s really easy to get along with. Good luck with your apps! Can’t go wrong with those choices.

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@stringbird I just applied to Eastern Music Festival (also viola). If you plan to apply for financial aid (as I did) the process is more intense than other festivals, requiring a good amount of tax forms, essays, etc.

Other similar festivals to EMF (if your daughter is looking for other options) include Sewanee Music Festival (where I was just accepted, they have a longer deadline extending into May) and Snow Pond.

Happy auditioning!

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Putting in a plug for Kinhaven Music Camp. My kid, (BRAG ALERT) who came in first place at both International Trumpet Guild junior division and World Trumpet Society high school division, absolutely LOVES this place. They have a two week junior camp for 13 and under, and a 6 week camp for entering 9th grade through entering college. The reason I put in the brag is that although my kid plays at a very high level, he finds the music experience very satisfying there. More importantly, he loves the human “summer camp” experience there. I’ve offered him BUTI and Interlochen, and tried to get him to audition for NYO (his summer teacher at Kinhaven who is involved in selecting NYO trumpet players says he’d very likely make it into NYO), but the kid just wants to go back to Kinhaven. He says, “I work SO hard all year. Honors and AP courses, intense school music program, Jazz at Lincoln Center, Juilliard pre. I just want to go to Kinhaven and be a kid, with music, for the summer!” They have a lot of silly summer camp traditions, in addition to the wonderful music program, on a beautiful Vermont campus not far from Weston, VT. I’m very grateful for this fun, supportive, communal, and yet musically high level summer camp experience for him.

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For those 18 and older, you might want to look into College Light Opera Company in Falmouth, MA. They have a live pit orchestra, play 9 different shows in about ten weeks. They pay their performers $1500/summer, plus room and board. Everyone lives together in a huge mansion near the water. I don’t think anyone gets any sleep, but they all seem to be having a very good time. Fantastic experience to prepare for pro level pit orchestra employment. Deadline to submit application is Feb 1st.

http://www.collegelightoperacompany.com/apply.html

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Honestly, NYO can be the biggest life changing opportunity for serious high school musicians if being selected. It is an absolutely free 4-week program including international performing tour. Great faculty, staffs and very nice kids.

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Hi all! Just bringing it back full circle to say this year’s recordings are made, 5 applications in and app fees paid ($$chokesputter*) and now D waits for live auditions in the next few weeks. Fortunately they come to her school so no travel costs. Here’s hoping for more acceptances than waitlists (unlike like last year) and biggest hope of all - a fellowship somewhere!

Wishing all your kiddos the best in their summer plans!

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Interlochen and BUTI applications are in! Not both on time, though. When I compiled my spreadsheet, Interlochen’s site said the application due date was 2/1, but sometime since then they changed it to a 1/15 “priority deadline”. So that application went in late.

How we recorded (I’m sure this’ll be boring for most, but I hope it will help some future high school parent) :

Neither of these auditions required accompaniment. In fact, BUTI’s site recommends against accompaniment. So we decided to try using a room in our home for the recordings.

We selected our den. The ceiling is standard height. The primary surfaces are paneling and brick, and the floors are wood. These surfaces reverberate sound, but there is some sound dampening from a floor rug, the couches, some wall hangings… We set up our two floor lamps for additional light. I had purchased a Tascam digital audio recorder (DAR), planning to use my iPhone for video and a software program called Audacity to match up the video and audio.

About a week beforehand, we did a sample recording to work through kinks in the setup. Having no tripod, we balanced the DAR on an extra music stand. The music stand wasn’t quite high enough to put the iPhone on and properly capture my tall daughter, so I just held the iPhone, as still as I could.

Playing back the sample recording, we could see immediately that holding the iPhone still was not still enough. Also, the light turned out to be an issue - my daughter looked pale and overexposed, and the shadow cast by the floor lamps was actually distracting. But as for the audio… I played through the audio from the two files, the DAR file and the iPhone file, and I could not tell the difference. At all. Both sounded fine. The DAR and the iPhone were right next to each other for recording, so I’m guessing that is part of the reason. Maybe also because we were not using any external mikes? And because there was only a single “voice”, the viola? In any event, we decided the audio from the iPhone was adequate for our purposes, and we did not bother with the DAR for our actual takes.

To fix the lighting, we strung a white tablecloth up from the ceiling and pointed our floor lamps at it - a poor quality imitation of the light diffusion techniques used in a photography studio, but it worked (a little more sound dampening, too, for better or worse). To fix the iPhone stability issue, we rigged a little strap to the music stand. Then we stood the stand on the coffee table to get the right height. Altogether the setup looked positively comical. This had the added benefit of making my daughter laugh and relax instead of being nervous and keyed up like she was for the last audition recording we did.

Our takes went relatively quickly after that. The resulting files were not professional-quality by any means, but they looked high-quality amateur and had surprisingly clean and clear sound.

What I liked about this method:
-Doing the sample recording a week beforehand allowed us knowledge and time to adjust as needed. No scrambling.
-Low-key, my daughter was relaxed and comfortable instead of nervous.
-Quality was “good enough” for this purpose.

What I want to change for next time:
-Get a real tripod for the iPhone if they are not too expensive.

Would I use this method for college pre-screens? Probably not. In my judgment, it’s not professional-looking or -sounding enough. But, we will likely use this method again for our Brevard and EMF takes. Brevard is due 2/10 and we could use the same material we just recorded, but my daughter says she wants to work with the teacher to see if she can polish a few spots in particular and re-record. EMF is due 2/20 and will require additional recorded materials.