Auditions, etc.

Auditions went well. This was the largest audition day of the year, with well over 100 applicants doing their thing. I've been managing auditions for eleven years now and I'm still surprised when someone shows up who cannot play their instrument. Like, at all.

My own definition of "being able to play your instrument" is different from the music school's definition, and is both broader and simpler. For instance, I've never fallen for the package-deal fallacy which claims that in order to play your instrument you must needs also be able to read music (a skill of questionable 21st-century value at any rate). But I do expect you to be musical, which is relatively rare. And being musical has nothing whatever to do with being able to play something difficult. Please, dear God, no showboating. Being "impressive" = musical onanism.

I would also like to request that you possess the ability to play well with others, which requires you to listen to the musicians around you. Which again, rare. We tend to assume that if two or more people are playing music together that they must be listening to each other. Yeah, no.

This will not surprise anyone who has engaged in conversation with their fellow human beings. We've all had the experience of conversationalizing with others who apparently don't have enough attention to follow along, yes? In my job, I speak with many people over the course of a day. I would say that about 30% of them (a generously low estimate) are otherwise intelligent people who have never learned to listen. Their minds wander when they stop speaking, and sometimes they flatly and cluelessly interrupt. I have less patience for this sort of social backwardness as I get older.

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In more colorful news, here's a photo I took on audition day morning of a painting hanging in the lobby of the Rialto Theater.