This level of shadiness has been present in their auditions for as long as I can remember. A significant percentage of their recent audition winners received auto advances to later rounds sometimes even to the finals. I even heard from a reliable source there, that in one instance the final round of an audition was postponed because one of the candidates was “sick”…. that orchestra really makes me question the point of paying into the union when stuff like this happens and I know a lot of people up here share similar feelings. It’s must be hard living in the shadow of Toronto and Montreal…
Not 100% true. The recent timpani trialists were not among those who auto-advanced. Auto-advances are typically given to candidates who've played a considerable amount of times as subs in the vacant position. If you've subbed with them enough, you can write in to request an auto-advance (I think this only applies in the case of a principal chair) and they can accept or deny at their own discretion. NACO has a very particular orchestral
In the case of a candidate being "sick", that's actually really benevolent of them. It's not any indication that they're fixing the result, but rather that they actually want to invest their efforts into properly selecting a winning candidate from the best available pool. If I spent months practicing for an audition, got to a final, and got sick, I would be pretty happy that the orchestra is giving me space to play at my best. If I were another candidate I don't think I'd feel very miffed given that they're paying for me to travel there in a final round.
Have there been some complaints about their audition procedures? Not significantly more than for any other orchestra. Sometimes the name of the game is to accept that an audition is not totally fair, try to do your best regardless, and stop holding onto the hope that you will win a particular job because you practiced hard.
This level of shadiness has been present in their auditions for as long as I can remember. A significant percentage of their recent audition winners received auto advances to later rounds sometimes even to the finals. I even heard from a reliable source there, that in one instance the final round of an audition was postponed because one of the candidates was “sick”…. that orchestra really makes me question the point of paying into the union when stuff like this happens and I know a lot of people up here share similar feelings. It’s must be hard living in the shadow of Toronto and Montreal…