Auditions

I love the regional or all-state audition experience.  I took nine kids this year (1 last year) and I am certain this will be a huge help in our growth as a program.  Even though we didn't all make the ensemble I believe all students learned sooo much in the two hours they were there.  I believe we were among the best prepared students there.

But, I hate the audition process too.  I live in a very diverse state and it seems  for many of the auditions you almost HAVE to be taking private lessons, which there is no way many of my kids can afford.  The audition pool is much less diverse than our state.  I love learning the 24 Italian Songs, but in twenty years we have not sung a Festival choir song in Italian.

The audition process has so much good.  But do we spend 90% of our MEA time on the top 5%?  Are there ways we could make the process much more diverse and inclusive?