Shintaro Taneda and Aidan Ip were the names I heard

I’m told Zachary Merkovsky was the winner

I saw on social media that Chris announced their decision to go back to St. Louis.

Welcome to the roller coaster of being an auditioning musician! You will still have disappointments and fall short of your goals, even as you get older and become a better player. Sometimes these experiences are a good jolt to our system to keep working and pushing ourselves to an even higher standard. Almost every professional musician you talk to will have at least one story of a festival or a job they continually applied to and never got accepted. It’s just part of the game. Take the opportunity this summer to have a break, do something different, visit friends or family, or challenge yourself to accomplish a personal goal (musical or not). If you commit to having a productive summer in some of these ways, you might find that in the fall, you have developed in new ways that you could not have done if you had been at a festival. And if getting accepted to more festivals next summer is a priority for you, you will attack that goal even hungrier than before. Good luck and hang in there.

Is it okay for festivals and programs to continually miss their deadlines and keep applicants waiting in the dark? No. Is it useful in any way to “hound administrators for updates” for days and weeks? Also no. You are right when you say it’s not in an admin’s power to send out the decisions any faster. When you apply to a job or a festival or any other opportunity, you are at the mercy of that organization’s process. Whether you decide to apply again in the future, based on your past experience, is totally your choice.

This is really well put

On one hand, if you’re getting comments that essentially say the committee was counting specific mistakes as a method for cutting people in prelims, I would ignore that feedback. Playing music is about more than just avoiding mistakes. On the other hand, you should be recording your audition rounds so that you can listen back, and you can confirm if you hear the same mistakes they did. If you are working with a coach and practicing “at every available hour” and still making several obvious mistakes in a prelim round, there’s a good chance you’re either not preparing the right way or you’re not translating your preparation into a good performance. If your coach is good, peak performance training is exactly what they should be helping you with. But if you still have fundamental problems in your playing, even the best coach won’t be able to help you. Springtime is the end of a long season of auditions and I was often very burned out at this stage when I was younger and taking everything that came up. I usually took a long break in the summer to clear my mind and rest the body before jumping back in the next year. It’s a tough road for sure, but it’s rewarding when you finally break through. If it was easy, everyone would win on their first try.

Makes sense. Glad to hear it was run well 👏

Thanks for the info! I heard that all rounds for this were fully screened, is that right? Also, does NACO have a policy of mandatory trial periods before hiring? I think Andrew is playing this position for the season already, so I just wonder why they feel the need for an additional trial. Anyway, congrats to them both and hope it works out

Super fair question, the lack of adequate feedback from committees these days is a real shame. When I sit on a committee I take it really seriously and write detailed notes for every player, trying to be specific about what I liked or didn’t like about their round. I always offer my comments to our PM who collects and distributes them to the candidates who ask. It feels like the least I can do for all the folks who travel and come audition for us. But it surprises me how many candidates don’t ask for comments, FWIW. Keep asking for comments every time, it’s your right. I think there is a big difference between what stands out between a round that is good enough to advance from a prelim/semi, vs a round that is worthy of being offered the job. In the earlier rounds, there is a natural weight given to more foundational elements such as time, intonation, rhythm, articulation control, note accuracy, etc. Being able to communicate appropriate musical ideas and an understanding of the score are nice, but that is simply a bonus if someone plays in time and with quality technical control. However in a final round, I find that less weight is given to those fundamental things. More leeway is given for mistakes in intonation, rhythm, articulation, etc because these things have already been proven in earlier rounds. Instead, the committee often becomes attuned to musical personality, risk taking, style, and artistic authenticity. I have heard many final rounds that I would “advance” in a prelim or semi but are not sufficient to be awarded a job. At this point we are selecting a lifelong colleague, and that means there are other priorities besides technical precision - things that matter in the day to day of a job, like flexibility, adaptability, focus, recovery after a mistake, commitment… when your playing is technically solid enough to consistently advance to final rounds, then you must seek that final level of polish and artistic command that will win the day.

This is an important topic and I think most people coming into their first job (either from school or from the freelance world) need to know more about this. First you have to understand that the union-negotiated CBA in your new job exists to provide decent working conditions and a MINIMUM amount of compensation for the players. The union CBA is there to “raise the floor” of what the orchestra is paid - it does not dictate what the “ceiling” of salaries and benefits can be. So you do not have to just accept what the CBA minimum salary is, you have the right to negotiate just like in any other job. And someone else already said, the time between your audition win and actually starting the new job is your best chance of negotiating your contract. Another good time to negotiate is if you win a job in a different ensemble, and you can ask your current employer to improve your personal contract in order to keep you. That being said, you have to understand your own position (what leverage you may or may not have) as well as what the culture and status quo at the given orchestra happens to be. For example if you won a section string position, you can’t expect to make the same or more as a titled player. If you play a wind/brass/percussion instrument, and you have doublings/secondary instruments as part of your position, you should look at what the contract says about doubling compensation and decide if that sounds fair, or if you think it could be better. If you’re a titled player, especially a principal, you will naturally have more leverage because A) you are in a prominent leadership position and B) you will be in the highest pay scale of your CBA, meaning there is no defined upper limit to your title’s pay scale. In fact, I know in some orchestras, if you were to accept the base overscale as a new principal, you’d be vastly underpaid since all the other principals have negotiated much higher overscale than what’s in the contract. It can be tricky to find this out, as it requires people disclosing their personal salaries to you / each other, but if you know someone in the ensemble and get connected to their committee chair or a union steward, someone will hopefully be square with you about what the lay of the land is. Aside from compensation, many other items are negotiable too - moving expenses are a big one that’s already been mentioned. If this job requires you to move to a new state/city, you should get some quotes for how much that will cost and put together an estimate for what you’ll need to cover your moving expenses. PTO and title relief are also negotiable - remember the CBA is just setting minimums for these things. If you’re a titled player, you can also try asking for other forms of compensation such as higher rates for solos/concertos, mandate that the group feature you as a soloist every so often, commission a new concerto on your behalf or help you purchase a new better quality instrument. This is a big topic, so those are just a few ideas. But on the whole, I think we as musicians too often are just grateful to take whatever offer we get and never think to try pushing for improved conditions and pay beyond the minimums.

Sounds like maybe it’s gotten worse under Stutzmann, but this has always been a problem at this orchestra. One of the most bizarre auditions I’ve ever taken part in occurred there under Spano in the mid-2010s, it involved multiple no-hires followed by a private audition held later. I remember hearing about a player who was hired there in the late 90s, who said they were approached by the committee chair during their trial week and bluntly told that the committee didn’t really like any of the candidates and that they’d probably not hire anyone.

I don’t know him. Maybe someone who does know him could shed some light on this sudden reversal. Seems to be the point of this whole forum. This thread has been viewed over 3 thousand times, I’m obviously not the only one who’s curious.

I’m told Everett Burns won it

This is all true and I agree. It’s a lot easier to blame other people or the circumstances than admit your own mistakes. Here’s my own hot take: luck plays a larger part in auditions than most candidates realize or admit. The idea that your own playing is the one and only factor in your success is egocentric. Your playing is one component of the process, and for the candidate it’s the only one you can control, so it’s the only one worth focusing on while you prepare. But on the other side of the screen sit a collection of HUMAN BEINGS who have their own preferences and attitudes about music. These tastes can vary wildly, and it’s that variety that makes music so interesting. If you play a great round (by your own standards), but you didn’t advance, you might have been a bit unlucky that day. Maybe your tastes don’t align with that committee’s tastes. Maybe the candidate who played right before you was the best round they had heard so far, so your round just sounded quite average to them, in comparison. Or the opposite, maybe all the other players in your group were very poor, and even though your round wasn’t your best, you still advanced because the committee was desperate to hear someone just do the basic things well. You can’t control any of this, and it doesn’t impact your prep, but you can admit it all plays a part in the result. In my experience, acknowledging luck as a factor in the process was not a scapegoat that I could blame if things didn’t go my way, so I could avoid responsibility for my poor prep and poor execution. Instead, accepting that a large part of the process is OUT of my control allowed me to be free, and play my own personality into the music. Then if I played to my potential and still didn’t advance or win, it was a lot easier for me to accept it and move on to the next one, instead of self-destructing trying to find the flaw that sunk me. And when I did win, the acknowledgement of luck helps keep my ego in check - I prepped well and performed well, but I had some good fortune along the way. Audition success can be found at the intersection of hard work and good luck.

From a candidate pov, why put yourself through months of prep for an audition, then make a second trip to play a trial, if you aren’t actually gonna take the job? Or was the experience of playing the trial so poor that you change your mind about it? From the committee’s pov, it’s pretty demoralizing to go thru an entire process and choose a winner, only for them to back out after they get the offer. Been there before and it’s a pretty lame situation, even if they’re doing it for a good reason. Hope they are able to find a new winner among the remaining candidates.

Play audition, win audition, play trial, win job…. then say never mind?

TON didn’t exist yet when I was a student, but everything I’ve heard from friends who did go there basically matches up with what is being said here. It’s super unfortunate because we need more training orchestras in the US, but clearly this one has a lot of management problems it needs to sort out.

Aside from both being “training orchestras” NWS has very little in common with TON. I would not equate the two in any way when weighing a decision for your next career move. It is clear which one is superior, if you believe even a shred of what has been said in the TON thread… NWS is a respected nstitution with 30+ years of history. The success of the fellows is well documented, there are literally hundreds of them in all the highest profile jobs in the biggest orchestra jobs. The level of the ensemble is comparable (and often better) than a mid-tier professional orchestra. It’s still a training orchestra with a pretty young average age, but no one there is a slouch at their instrument. The guest conductors and soloists they bring in are absolute top class. While you don’t get weekly lessons, you get coaching from the top players on your instrument several times a year, while establishing a quality professional network. You get free housing and utilities in a place you would otherwise struggle to afford living (Miami Beach) and you play in an architectural marvel of a building. The weekly stipend could always be better, but it’s enough to live on and pay for audition expenses. They also have loan programs that allow fellows to buy the more expensive instruments they otherwise might not afford. Obviously it’s not perfect, but nothing is. One complaint I hear a lot is that they don’t offer their fellows health insurance. Also, I heard that foreign (non-US) musicians have their visa fees deducted from their stipends, so they make a bit less than US-born players which seems lame. Also the schedule is just as busy as a top tier orchestra, and the repertoire is often harder given the amount of chamber music and new music you have to play. There are also mandatory seminars, workshops, education and community work, and audience engagement stuff that fellows complain about interfering with their practice time. People have certainly left NWS early in order to go to a diploma program so they could just focus on taking auditions. But I would recommend to stay there (unless you win a job) and only go to a diploma school if you need to afterward. Again, no school or training program is perfect but New World is the only place out there providing a real link between school and professional world, if that’s something you want or need.

You’d have to read their CBA to find out if they’re breaking their own rules about distributing audition repertoire to candidates. There’s nothing mandated by the federation, all the rules can vary from orchestra to orchestra. But I generally agree that the way Principal Keyboard positions are being handled by ICSOM orchestras is a super negative trend. Many groups have eliminated the position completely. I’ve heard truly insane stories about how these “auditions” have gone down in other groups. It’s not great.