Can anyone provide a good list of audition books that offer advice, insight, psychology of the audition process, preparation, and auditioning for orchestras?

Thanks.

Not specifically auditions, but Bernard Kaplan's "Practicing for Artistic Success" is superb. I carry it everywhere and keep reading it. You can't just read through it, you have to apply what he says to make it work. And it does.
It applies to any instrument.
I think someone on this forum wrote a Trieste on auditioning a year or so ago.

Regarding the psychology of the audition process, I find sports psychology books to be much more helpful than the music ones. When I read one of the most popular audition process books, it said something analogous to "Do you feel like it is hard to focus when you are in the audition room? Do you have trouble controlling your nerves in the audition room? Is it hard for you to continue at a high level after making a mistake during the audition?" And my thoughts for these were "no... not usually... maybe sometimes? Will I feel that way next time? What if I do?? OH NO!" As you can imagine, this was not productive for me, and the more examples I read of "possible" negative attitudes people can have under stress, the more difficult I imagined the process actually being.

So instead of going crazy with those ideas, I picked up several sports phychology books, and the wonderful thing I've found is that 1) the stories are incredibly inspiring, and 2) it is really very easy to realize which circumstances/situations in sports performance are completed analogous to what particular demon we might be feeling as we prepare for difficult auditions/performances. It allowed me to recognize similar areas of difficulty and problem-solving for my own issues without influencing imagined ones that aren't really there.

Now, I've always thought this a bit odd, but I've read something recently that helped me to understand why this is for me, and thought it might be of interest to other readers. It is a book about intuition called Gut Feelings, and in one section the author (Gerd Gigerenzer) talks about how if an amateur performer is told to focus on something specific, they often will perform that aspect better, while as if an expert is told to focus on something specific, they often will perform more poorly on that aspect, as experts are much more dependent on "letting it happen" in a more intuitive way. So calling intuition away from the flow by pointing out one particular aspect of performance often will impede their performance.

I've always known this in some way (whenever I really love something a colleague is doing in the orchestra, I know to never mention it to them until all of the performances are over, so that they don't overthink that aspect), but it's neat to see it revealed in some scientifically approached non-music driven account of how our brains work.

Sorry for going a little off topic, but hopefully someone will find it interesting...

Cheers,
Monica Daniel-Barker

Maybe this will help. I'll try to keep it short.
While I do play the violin in a semi-professional orchestra now and put myself through college by playing in the Tulsa Philharmonic I was an airline pilot by profession. I also did some test flying for NASA. Make a mistake in an audition and you may not get hired. Make a small mistake near the speed of sound and you might die instantly.
To prepare myself for those important very important check rides and emergencies I went through each problem (engine fire on take off, for instance) in my mind at slow speed. If I made a mistake I backed up and started the take off again. When I had it down perfectly I speeded it up to full speed. I religiously did something like this every night before falling asleep. It got to the point that when we had a real life this-will-kill-us-if-I-
screw-it-up emergency it was no big deal. I'd done it thousands of time before in my head. When our lives were on the line in this super serious problem the process worked extremely well.
The key here in working through a piece or problem mentally is visualizing it very well. See yourself playing whatever, hear it clearly in your head, smell the background odors in the room, feel the instrument in your hands, see the judges watching you. By the time you do this for real you will have been there hundreds of times before so, trust me, it will be no big deal. In the five major career emergencies I had that could kill us in a split second with one wrong move, or even a small error meant death, this worked every time.
The caveat here is that you must have the ability to pull it off to begin with. I could do this mentally a hundred thousand times for a Concertmaster opening in the Berlin Philharmonic, but it won't work as I'm nowhere near good enough even to make that orhestra. You
have to have the chops to begin with.
Good luck.

Pigmeister - what a great post. As a professional I often think before going out for an important solo or chamber music concert, "well, at least it's not brain surgery. No one will die if I don't nail that shift or passage." I don't miss and no one dies. It's really another level of pressure to know that if you do, someone actually might.

Thank you, but the thing is, by doing this over and over in your mind you don't have to think.
When things got really tough I just let my mind sort out what to do then do it. Thinking slowed things down and muddied the waters. Same with music, if you know the piece or passage well enough simply "sit back" and let your mind play the instrument so you can actually enjoy watching and listening to yourself play. Psychologically it's not really you playing out there, it's that "other person," so any errors are not yours. That's how your mind sort of sees this and that takes some of the pressure off your playing.
Yogi Berra said it perfectly, and it's true, "you can't think and hit at the same time." Your uncluttered mind can find a problem and fix it before you're even consciously aware
that there was a problem. But, again, you have to have the piece down cold to make this work.
To answer an emailed question, I flew 727's for TWA. The pilots respectfully called the 727's "Pigships." Management said I was very good at flying the 727 and gave me the name Pigmeister. Most of my flying the last 13 years were professional baseball and football teams plus most of the major orchestras from this country and others. With a musical background I had a lot of fun on the orchestra charters. And not just a few of the pilots I flew with as a Copilot and then as Captain had music performance degrees.
Cheers,

Ray

I agree that there is a certain amount of letting go and sitting back. But the danger lies then in getting disconnected. I think there has to be more "executive function" involved - not necessarily for the technical aspect, but certainly for the musical one. We've all experienced players who were amazing technically, but musically left something to be desired. On the other hand, I'd much prefer listening to a player who was really "dialed in" and made a couple of mistakes than one who went on autopilot, as it were. I think there's a fine balance to be found between the two states of mind here. Everyone has to find their own.

So you flew charters for both sports teams and orchestras, huh? Which ones behaved better?!?

I apologize for the length of these posts.
They all behaved, unlike sports teams. Sports teams left the plane looking like a bad fraternity party aftermath. One flight attedant got on the P.A. and said once, "do your mothers know you do this?" LOL
Each major orchestra definitely had its own personality. That's something that might come into play if someone is thinking of auditioning for them. Since I lived in the Steamboat Springs, Colorado during part of this time the Swiss Romande Orchestra only wanted to hear about the good ski areas in the states.
Chicago Symphony; Nice people, but quite serious.
Cleveland Orchestra; They were heading overseas into a slightly turbulent area and were very worried. Can't blame them. They also had a confident air about them.
Washington D.C.Symphony. Had fun teasing them a bit. It was a turbulent ride to Jacksonville, Fla., I think it was. I always announced during the welcome aboard talk that I had studied with Dorothy DeLay and Kurt Sassmannshaus for a bit. That always got interesting responses. Some players took a chance because two of them had Strads, gave them to me and said "prove it." I did. Then after the turbulence picked up quite a bit one of them asked me "what happens if we crash?" I said with a straight face, "the price of Strads would go up a notch."
Philadelphia. I was warned by my boss that they liked to play practical jokes. I reached down in my flight kit for a new chart and found a small snake in there. (This was before 9/11 of course) I laughed and took it back to the cabin and told some people that unless someone claimed it it was going flying, outside the plane. Very easily done on the cargo versions of the 727 through the sextant hole in the ceiling. We used to open that once in awhile at high altitudes to clean out all the cockpit dust. We didn't have that hole on this plane, but they didn't know that. I also would not have done it, even to a snake. One player, with a grin, said it wasn't his, but he would take it for now. The Philadelphians were also nice folks. They didn't even boo Santa Clause as is the Philadelphia area's reputation.
Boston Symphony. They came across as the standard person you would meet on a street and talked about everything except music. They also seemed sort of intellectual, something like Cleveland. If they weren't musicians I think they would be science or medical researchers.
Montreal and Toronto; They just seemed happy to get away from the cold and head South.
My home town St. Louis Symphony. They liked to party. Unlike sports teams they left the plane pretty much like they found it after drinking up all the booze. One of their violinists was also a licensed Flight Instructor and FAA Check Airman. We are good friends to this day. He marvled how well I flew. I told him I can't play four octave scales or the first violin Firebird and Don Juan worth beans so we're even.
Basically there you have it. All the major orchestra people seemed to be above average in intelligence. Everyone spoke very well in complete sentences, unlike some sports teams.
I always briefed the crew that the instruments many of them carried on board were very valuable and to let them put them where they want. I enjoyed those flights a lot and made some very good friends.

Hope these help.

http://www.violinist.com/blog/laurie/20095/10156/

http://findarticles.com/p/arti...s_2_58/ai_n30909033/

Thanks for those great stories!

On our last European tour we flew with a Swissair charter for a few legs of the trip. They were incredibly nice and let a few people sit in the cockpit for take off and landing (defnitely not something that would happen in the US). I went in there once and got way too nervous looking at all of those buttons and levers. But they came to a concert and seemed to really enjoy it.

I'll never forget one charter we took which was from Frankfurt to the Canary Islands. We had a four hour layover and by the time we got on the plane, we'd been up for probably 24 hours. The instant we got in our seats, everyone totally crashed. I heard one of the flight attendants remark that they have never seen an entire flight go to sleep before. I think we were pretty well-behaved on that flight.

quote:

They were incredibly nice and let a few people sit in the cockpit for take off and landing (defnitely not something that would happen in the US).

Don't be too sure. LOL. My lips are sealed.