Today is the last day of regular auditions for the AYS Program 2012 - 2013 season. We held all of the auditions here in the new building, and other than one day where we had to pause for a violent rainstorm (noise issues), it went very well, and you can sense that the students are excited about the new facility.
Auditions obviously signal the beginning of the next new season. Here are a couple of things you might not know about our high school auditions:
1. All students audition each year, and are placed in an orchestra based on that audition. So there is no point in counting up "how many openings there are" because all seats in each orchestra are open.
2. The auditions are blind; i.e. the judges don't know who is playing and they just have a number, and give a score to each applicant (you can see the sample judging sheets on our website). At the end of the auditions, the scores are tallied up and the sections assigned.
3. I have nothing AT ALL to do with auditions. I am busy working on the administrative end of the AYS Program - those fun things like the budget for our 2012 - 2013 season, the renovations taking place this summer for the new building, the contracts for our staff and contractors next year, and my favorite part of the job, raising funds to support our efforts. I leave the artistic work of the program to our very able Music Director, Gabriel Gordon and our talented staff of conductors.
Thank you to our conducting staff and many guest judges for listening to hundreds of students this past three weeks, and for my administrative staff for the smooth handling of the auditions - I truly did not have to do a thing with the auditions this year, which was wonderful.
ONWARD AND UPWARD!
