I was lucky enough to be a judge at Connecticut All-State auditions this past Saturday. After about 15 years of judging trombones I judged Tenors this weekend as they were way short of vocal judges. I was lucky to be paired with a very talented judge.
A few observations:
1. We were shocked by how many no-shows there were. These were slots that declared and paid. We had about 30-40% no shows. Many of the kids who stayed home would have been selected. They made the wrong choice.
2. At this level everyone is "pretty good".
3. Sight reading was almost always the difference between being selected or not. I think having 20% of the score for sight reading is too much.
I feel it becomes harder and harder to make All-State without private lessons. In the most diverse state in the nation I believe All-States seems to highlight a musical achievement gap. I am curious to see what type of proposals develop.
I was judging yesterday, too. A colleague pointed out that a lot of the no shows this year were probably due to the fact that All-State bumps up again April vacation. Many of those top tier kids travel with their school groups at that time, or some had vacations planned that prevented them from auditioning.
ReplyDeleteSure, but each of those kids declared and paid for auditions? They certainly knew the dates before they paid. Our vacation is during All-State week and I had a student say "no thank you", but I didn't declare her or have her on the list.
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