There are a number of misconceptions regarding this audition that I’d like to clear up. For the record, I am a musician in the Minnesota Orchestra. I was not on this audition committee. It is not true that the 2 candidates auto-advanced to the finals started in an unscreened round. The CBA says that the first round of the finals must be screened if it includes current members, and that is what happened at this audition as Jaclyn, who is on a one-year contract, is considered a current member for the purposes of the CBA. Furthermore, individual audition committees cannot simply hold an audition in any manner they like. Their rules and procedures are subject to orchestra committee and management approval. Both the orchestra committee and management have put these rules and procedures under a great deal more scrutiny for fairness and consistency in recent years, something our CBA requires. It is more than a bit odd, and runs into the realm of conspiracy-level thinking, to suggest that the committee held multiple semi-final rounds for the sole purpose of wearing people out to eliminate all other candidates. Why would they want to waste their own time doing this? Is it truly reasonable to suggest that the entire committee, or even the majority of them, were in lockstep agreement on that plan and worked it out secretly ahead of time? Could all seven audition committee members, who disagree on things all the time by the way, really hold the same belief that Jaclyn or the other auto-advanced candidate could not possibly be bested by someone else and conspire to all vote no against everyone else, no matter what? Even if they heard someone truly amazing? I can attest that the honest desire of every member of the orchestra is to find an amazing player for the position who demonstrates during the audition that they have the qualities needed to succeed. If that player is heard in a prelim or semi-final, they will generally get the votes to advance. If that didn’t happen at this audition, that doesn’t mean there weren’t really good players there. It just means that those qualities were not demonstrated in that single moment in time, which is all an audition is for any of us, ultimately - one moment in time. As the to the merits of auto-advancing as a concept, we could talk all day about it. There are good arguments to be made for and against it. In this case and other Minnesota Orchestra auditions, it is something that has been done here out of professional courtesy out of recognition that these candidates have capably and admirably contributed to our artistic product (often times for many years) and out of the recognition that they already have many of the qualities needed to succeed. However, they still need to knock it out of the park in the finals to get offered the job. It has happened many times that candidates starting in the finals stumble in that moment and don’t get the job, so don’t assume that its pre-ordained that a “favored” candidate will always win.

She won.

San Francisco’s CBA also mandates a trial week.

There have actually been 4 viola spots filled just this season, as well as 2 section violin positions, associate concertmaster, principal harp, and second flute. Also the bass position last season as mentioned and other successful hires in recent years. The bassoon and horn positions have run into snags and one can speculate on the reasons for that, but generally speaking Minnesota makes hires from their auditions.