Stuff That's Interesting

I use Google Reader to aggregate all of my RSS feeds, including blogs, news sites, computer and electronics discussions, etc.  A cool feature of Google Reader is the ability to share articles you find interesting with your online buddies.  A cool extension to this cool feature is the ability to make these shared items a clip on a website - such as your own blog.

To that end, a cool new feature of my blog is the addition of the stuff from news feeds that I read that I find to be interesting enough to share.  You can find this on the right side of my blog, with the amazingly creative title, "Stuff That's Interesting".

Enjoy.

When Reality Isn't Fun

Sitting in my hotel room in New Orleans.  Just played my last scheduled audition (for now).  The result?  Exactly the same as the first two.  Ten minutes of playing, no call back.

Damn.

Honestly, I have a lot to be happy about.  It really was my best audition, yet.  All the notes were there.  I played with more sense of musical phrasing, and I think my dynamics were better.  And, yes, to drag out that oft-used cliche, I gained even more good experience.

The one problem I had here in the Big Easy turned out to be the same problem I had in Houston - the humidity.  Something about it takes away some of the underlying strength in my reeds, making them a tad mushy, and making a few of my notes really hard to keep from playing flat.  That certainly bit me in Houston, especially since they tune to A=442, and it bit me to a lesser extent in New Orleans.  It's tough living in a dry climate and trying to play in a humid climate.  I'll have to figure that problem out soon, if I want to have any success in the east.

In the short term, it's a little discouraging to think of the money spent, hours burned and time lost away from my ever supportive wife, and have nothing to show for it but "good learning experiences".  However, not expecting this exact result would have been extremely naive on my part.  Rarely does a musician go in and nail their first audition and land a perfect gig.  Or their second, third, or fourth, for that matter.  Yes, it does happen, but not often.  There are just too many other great bassoonists out there.  Sometimes reality sucks.

A friend of mine who's enjoyed not one but two full-time orchestra gigs took five auditions before he advanced for the first time.  It wasn't until his seventh audition that he won his first job.  That makes me feel a little better.

A year ago, when I told my bassoon professor I really wanted an orchestra gig, his response was, "Getting one takes hard work and tenacity."  I've put in a good amount of hard work.  Now is the part where I learn about that tenacity thing.  Should be fun.

So, that's that. Three tries. Three busts. Perfect record.  Back home tomorrow.

The Neighborhood Chipmunk Plays with Legos

It amazes me to look back and find that I haven't posted since September of 2007 - and that was a post that, for some reason, I saved as a draft, and never published. (Incidentally, you'll see that I just published that post right after this one.) September of 2007! That's like declaring Blog Bankruptcy. That's like saying to all my faithful readers (both of them) that I could care less whether or not you know what's up, or whether you ever check back in with this here blog. What do you do after more than half a year of absence to get things rolling again? I've seen three options used on other blogs in this situation: 1) Profusely apologize, and promise never ever ever to disappear from the blogosphere again, 2) Explain in explicit detail all of the lame excuses for not posting, or 3) Completely ignore that you've been absent for so long, and continue writing as if your last post was yesterday. Hmm - which option to choose, which option...

I just got back from Toronto, where I took my first professional bassoon audition in 10 years. This time, the target was the 2nd bassoon spot with the Toronto Symphony. The results were the same as the one 10 years ago - a quick ten minutes of fame, and lots of time in the hotel room afterwards to think about what I could have done differently to advance. I practiced nothing but excerpts all semester, spent hundreds of dollars on plane fare and a hotel, flew thousands of miles, and had nothing to show for it - except the "good experience". I have a love/hate relationship with the "good experience" phrase. In one sense, all it really means is that you didn't get the job, and you have to find some justification for all the time and money you just spent. In another sense, though, it is symbolic of looking for things that really did go right during the audition to use for next time. I keep going back and forth on which meaning of the phrase most applies to my audition. I guess the only thing to do is to break down the good and the bad.

The bad: I made a couple of really stupid mistakes, which you absolutely cannot do, and expect to advance in a professional audition. I got a little psyched out right before I went on, and was a little more jittery than I expected. Oh, and I didn't advance to the next round.

The good: I actually took a professional audition - I need to remind myself how important of a step that was. Besides the couple of mistakes, I actually played a pretty decent audition. The Brahms Violin Concerto excerpt was flawless, and I rocked the Berlioz Symphony Fantastique fifth movement (yes, the double tonguing one). I got through the entire list of excerpts - not everyone did before getting hit with the universally feared phrase "Thank you very much." (which is a nice way of saying, "Get the hell off the stage.") I got to hear the Toronto Symphony in concert, and I got to meet Michael Sweeney, the principal bassoonist.

Yeah, I guess I can sincerely say it was a good experience.

I'm flying out to Houston this Saturday to try my luck again - 2nd bassoon opening with the Houston Symphony. Odds are I'll have a similar story to tell, but you never know. If that doesn't pan out, there's yet another audition in New Orleans a week later. I'll be there, hoping for that last chance at a job before trudging back to school in the fall.

Anyway, this post was going to be a kind of "here's what I did this past year", but it turned into an essay about auditions. Maybe I'll get into the whole "whimsical look back" next time. For now, I'll just end by saying that I can't tell you how much I'm enjoying playing the bassoon these days, and having a sense of purpose again, however fleeting it may be.

Until next time.