"...the committee just felt that none of the semi-finalists merited consideration..." "...A person's playing is scrutinized every which way before being offered the position..." Obviously, the committee thought that a few of these semi-finalists merited further consideration after the first semi-final. They then continued to scrutinize their playing every which way in more and more "semi-final" rounds, without subjecting auto-advanced finalists to that same degree of scrutiny. /// "If you just think that all auto-advancing should be done away with, then prelims will go on all day, or for multiple days..." There are a lot of worthwhile arguments to be made in favor of auto-advancement, but this is the weakest BS I've ever heard. The highest numbers of auto-advanced candidates I've ever heard of at any audition is somewhere below 20. That's two or three more prelim groups, 2-3 hours, to hear all those candidates. I've attended plenty of auditions where prelims stretched across two days that seemed totally fair and unobjectionable to me. In this case of only having 1 or 2 candidates auto-advanced, hearing them in an earlier round obviously adds even less time to the schedule. /// The matter of the CBA is that it allows the committee to CHOOSE how to run their audition on a case by case basis, and this committee chose to run a horribly unfair audition. The issue in this particular case is not just that candidates were auto-advanced to an un-screened final, but that the committee then went out of their way to hold extra rounds to cut EVERY SINGLE other candidate. If they held a single semi-final and the committee agreed on one hearing that none of those candidates were up to *****, that would look a little sus, but it would at least be believable that if some of those candidates had played better, they could have been given a chance. The fact that some of these candidates evidently played well enough to merit further consideration not once, but TWICE, and then were cut anyway in a THIRD semi-final...? Ridiculous. Absolutely no one is happier with this nonsense than if the orchestra had just announced Jaclyn's appointment out of the blue without an audition. At least that way, candidates wouldn't have wasted their time, effort, and money coming out to an audition where the committee was not interested in giving them a fair hearing. There are tons of horn auditions happening right now. Any candidate who was good enough to advance through the prelim and two out of three(!!!) semi-finals with an orchestra as good as Minnesota is obviously going to be in serious contention for other jobs. One of those people could have instead prepared for (and won!) any number of other auditions this month (Sarasota, Oregon, Atlanta, Louisville, Rochester...) if they hadn't spent their limited resources on this sham.

Regardless of what's in the CBA or what's normal, choosing to continue holding "semi-finals" until everyone is cut is stinky. Especially for a horn audition, where fatigue is a significant limiting factor. Even playing two heavy rounds in a single day will push great horn players to the limit, let alone three. These candidates were invited to spend their money to come out for an audition where they were set up for failure. That is not cool, period. If the horn section wanted to hire Jaclyn, fine, good for them, she's a great player and as far as I'm concerned she deserves a job in a great orchestra. In this case, the CBA is a problem in one of two ways: either the orchestra should be contractually required to hold an audition where auto-advanced candidates compete in a blind round against outsiders, OR the orchestra should be allowed to hire who they want without wasting everyone else's time and money. I don't care which way, but "fairness theater" is not doing anyone any favors.

Yikes 😬

Yeah Vancouver is an amazing city, but the orchestra does not pay well enough for the cost of living.

They've had a large rotating cast of guest principals, I would not read anything more into any of those appearances. They will almost certainly hold another publicly listed audition. They went through a very similar process when trying to hire for principal flute over the last couple seasons.

I think the general rule is that travel is usually covered for separate finals, but not for separate semis. The latter often seems to me to be a way to dissuade applicants who are not auto-advanced.

I don't personally think of it as defeatist - I just increasingly think that, like curioustpt implies, certain aspects of running a "fair" audition are often enacted merely to protect the committee members from claims of unfairness, rather than to actually ensure fairness. At the end of the day, this is a huge waste of time and money for a lot of people to go to certain auditions, and it's better to be honest about it. A lot of these orchestras are obligated to hold their auditions a certain way due to their CBA, which means we've got union musicians enforcing policy in their orchestra that is imposing MASSIVE costs audition on other union musicians with little to no potential upside. Where's the solidarity in that? In other fields, people hire who they want. Qualification for the job is a piece of that, but so are networks, diversity preferences, personality fit, and all sorts of other variables. At the end of the day, committees are doing exactly the same thing - voting to hire who they /want/ to hire, not who's somehow objectively "the best candidate for the job." There's no such thing. It's baked into our language with "winning" auditions, as if it's some kind of athletic competition where one person scores the most points or finishes the race the fastest. But the reality is the committee members are all weighing some vague noncommittal social pressure to "impartiality" against the desire to hire a person they know and like, or not hire a person they've heard negative gossip about, or their moral social justice impulse to hire a candidate of some marginalized identity group. Hiring, regardless of field, is complicated and messy. And it's way higher stakes when 1. We're in a field with way more candidates than good jobs, and 2. those candidates are spending weeks of dedicated work and hundreds of dollars to travel, in person, to be considered for those positions. Why keep up the lie that there's some impartial, objective "best candidate" at any audition? It's ridiculous on its face when you actually think about it, isn't it? And yet believing in that lie props up this whole status quo audition system, which we all agree kinda ***** anyway. At least back in the bad old days, a great player with roots in a community and relationships in an orchestra could much more often stay put, instead of needing to uproot their whole life in order to get the employment they're qualified for.

No updates - SFS has been bringing in a rotating cast of guests. SFS management has been trying to cut costs, so I expect they're trying to lowball Dave, but he's negotiating from enough of a position of strength that he can wait them out for a better offer. The hard deadline would probably be for him to start in the fall.

There is no such thing as a perfect way to run an audition. If a section/committee already knows and likes a person, and their playing, maybe they're actually the best person for the job. Or maybe they're not, and the audition was rigged, who's to say? Life isn't fair. The music industry isn't fair. All the audition procedures in the world are, at best, a theatrical presentation of "fairness."

I've had a sight-reading section round, which I would advise committees against. I understand the merits of asking for sight-reading, and asking for section playing, but combining them is obviously just setting candidates up for failure. (That particular audition ended in a no-hire.)

That doesn't really mean anything as far as the audition is concerned 🤷🏼‍♂️

Could it have been Michael Bellofatto? I know he is based in Boston and he has been doing well at many auditions over the last couple years

Negotiations still have not finalized as far as I know.

Since you're set on this pathway, with all it's trials and tribulations, then let me add emphasis to the "expert feedback" component. If you're taking auditions for part-time orchestras and not winning or at least making finals, you would probably benefit greatly from more instruction, and the best you can find. There's a lot of bad teaching in our field - teaching is HARD, and lots of people get a teaching gig on the side, but understandably prioritize their performance and personal obligations. A lot of people get held back in this field because they're too willing to defer to a mediocre teacher for years of their training. There are very few MASTER teachers on any given instrument. The easiest litmus test is to study with someone whose students are already regularly winning jobs. If you live close enough to any of them to study with them, do it. If you don't live close to any of those proven teachers on your instrument, fortunately, there are great teachers out there who don't have that kind of track record, but you have to go out and find them. Try a lesson with everyone you can in your area, and see who clicks. You need to be willing to be critical (internally, of course) of people's teaching. You should be able to respect someone greatly as a player and as a person, and acknowledge that their teaching simply isn't worth your while. Conversely, someone who's not the best player in town and has a difficult personality might actually be a great teacher. A great lesson should smack you in the face with how productive and motivating it is - you should walk out excited to work on ACTIONABLE advice. Now, even the best teachers can't give you that week after week, but when someone's ideas and approach are new to you, it should be very energizing. There's absolutely nothing wrong with being on a slower career trajectory than others. Maybe you're less talented, and if so, that's not a reflection on your worth as a person or what the ceiling of your potential may be. Maybe you're plenty talented, and you just didn't get the right instruction, didn't work hard enough, or got sidetracked by other priorities in life. A slower or later trajectory can still get you to great places, but you need to honestly accept where you're at in order to take the most effective actions to keep moving forward - including taking lessons even if you feel "too old." Again: there is no timeline, there is nowhere you're "supposed" to be. 🙂 Best of luck!

"I'm not talking about moving from one orchestra to another, or even part-time to full-time." The bolded here really carries a lot of weight in validating your implied notion that this is rare/not possible. Working your way up the ladder is the way of the game for most people. If you want to jump right to comfortable, upper-middle class, stable life in the city of your choice, you chose the wrong field. The different audition standards at different levels of orchestra are significant. If you're getting close at auditions, don't take that to mean you can get too picky. It's better to get on the ladder with a more attainable gig first, so that you can get paid to gain experience and continue honing your craft. There are a LOT of people who win great jobs beyond the age of 30, 40, or 50. Most of them spent some time in the Podunk Symphony Orchestra in order to get there. It is fully possible to win an audition well over the age of 30, but you've gotta be playing all the time to be in shape, and you need to be able to dedicate lots of time to practice. We get this faulty impression of a specific timeline when kids win jobs right out of school, but they have the privilege of living off student loans (or the bank of Mom and Dad) and playing all the time in school. By contrast, if you're an independent adult working a normal job to pay the bills, it becomes very difficult to have the energy and mental bandwidth to adequately prepare for an audition in your off-hours after full days of work. The straightforward way to work fewer hours, while honing your craft, is to win a part-time gig. Then you can reduce your non-music workload and have more time to commit to practicing. Use freelance income to buy yourself more time to practice by quitting your day job, even if it means reducing your total annual earnings. All else equal, someone living frugally making $30k a year freelancing, with no day-job, has a much better chance to win their next audition than someone making $60k with a time-consuming day job who plays some gigs on the side. There is no finish line in this career, there's nowhere you're "supposed" to be at by a specific age. But you can't fool yourself about whether you're actually making forward progress, or just stagnating and praying for a miracle to drop a career in your lap. This line of thinking is totally a meme at this point but I'll say it anyway: at any given audition there are maybe a dozen people qualified to play the gig. Your job is to be one of those dozen. If you're auditioning regularly and consistently not advancing, that is pretty direct evidence that you're not playing well enough for the kinds of gigs you're auditioning for. If that's the case, you need to be practicing harder/better, getting more expert feedback about your playing, and taking more attainable auditions. If you are advancing sometimes, you're doing some things right, but you've gotta keep going - do not get complacent, do not let your foot off the gas. Being great at this will never stop being hard work. Some sacrifices are necessary to make this career work. Most people who are smart, hard-working, and competent enough to "make it" as performing musicians could have made much more money in another field if they so chose. If that level of material comfort is your preference, feel free to choose another career. There are a LOT more musicians in the world making decent, middle-class livings than there are living the kinds of wealthy lives that social media and reality TV make us take for granted these days. Comparison is the thief of joy. If you're response to many of these costs/downsides is: "but that sounds ******, I don't want to have to do that," then feel free to go live the kind of life you do want. Your sunk costs do not matter. There is no timeline, there is no finish line, no matter your path in life. If you wish you were living the life of a lawyer or a doctor or a software engineer, you can start now. If, on the other hand, you want this career enough to be okay with working harder, making less money than you dreamed of, and moving across the country to a place you don't really love, then do what you have to do to get on the ladder.

Any news on the results of the second audition?

I heard Carys Sutherland from Juilliard was offered the position

Natalie Stutzmann was just appointed MD in Atlanta last season, so you can't blame her for no-hires dating back years. But yes, there can be multiple explanatory factors that all contribute to any given no-hire. These things are complicated.

It's also worth noting that there are just a ton of titled horn positions open right now, and there have been MANY no-hires for this level of horn position since COVID—this is not just an Atlanta thing. There just seems to be a shortage of top-tier principal (/associate) horn players right now, and that assessment has been validated by many committees all over the country. Lots of orchestras are competing for a small handful of big names that have been bouncing around the circuit - Atlanta is one of the few big orchestras to actually hire a principal horn since COVID, with Ryan Little. Then the top top orchestras have had some circulation with Mark Almond and Dave Cooper... but we're really talking about a small group of elite players here. And of course, all of those players faced their fair share of rejection and the fickleness of auditions on their way to the top. I'm sure this is not the last we'll be hearing of these finalists, and I hope great opportunities are coming their way.

That's great! Congrats to her and to the orchestra.