I understand that orchestra's are afraid to hire someone that they feel won't be a good fit with their ensemble. However, since the individual is basically on probation for 1-2 years, what is the real risk of hiring? There is clearly a cost for people who auditionned but what is the cost to the orchestra to put on an audition? Advertising, administrative costs, committee time (paid?? or not paid??), free lance musicians to fill in (cheaper than Full time or less??) Is it true that some orchestra's have policies that they must hire if they hold an audition?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: MyAuditions,

I think that there is no worse outcome that an audition committee fears than hiring no one for a vacancy - except hiring the wrong person. This would be most applicable for principal positions, where there might be someone in the ensemble who can step up and hold the place until another audition can be held, or a known quantity from outside can be offered a temporary position. Take into account the sheer inertia of dealing with a new person in a principal chair who is unknown, along with the potentially huge long-range effects on the section and orchestra, and taking a chance when the last person standing isn't a slam dunk becomes a very unpalatable option.

I understand why this happens too, but I don't agree with it. Maybe it's just because I've never been in a position to be on an audition committee yet, & until I do, I just won't be able to see it the same way. However, since I'm on the other side of the fence right now, it's (needless to say) frustrating when this happens for everyone. Sure, we (the auditioners) would like to win a position, but I think I can speak for many when I say that we can feel nothing but helpless & disappointed when it happens. I'd rather go to an audition & see a deserving person win than for them to just not pick anyone at all. I'm sure many of us are sick of 'practice auditions'. They get expensive. Not that auditioners need any more slaps of reality or to egos or anything, we're used to the system by now. But obviously if an orchestra likes a player the first time, if they're not sure about one little bitty thing, then you feel like they're thinking "oh, they miscounted that ONE note" or "they rushed that one beat". I'm thinking what's the harm in taking a shot & asking the player to play it again instead of the auditioner left to assume that the committee could be thinking "oh, well they can't do this, so they just won't fit in our orchestra"? The committee hasn't even heard the players play WITH the orchestra (yes, I'm aware of the difficulties why this isn't as readily available as we'd like it to be). I've heard many players that sound better by themselves or vice versa. It just seems silly. However, my argument is this. Playing with good groups greatly enhances your level of playing. Even if the crop of people that show up at an audition aren't exactly what they expect, they should at least be given a chance instead of written off. If they're GOOD ENOUGH but never given the shot to even play with a high quality group, it's bass ackwards if you ask me. There, that's how I feel about it. No arguments please, I just had to include my 2 cents because I'm growing more & more frustrated with this process, & I know I'm not the only one

-edited to sound less ranty-

This message has been edited. Last edited by: orchdork,

Well, I know Orchdork doesn't want an argument, but as someone who has served on committees, including one that has failed to find a suitable candidate, I must say you are mistaken if you believe we are casting people aside over one note or one beat of rushing. Please, give us more credit than that. If you think that is what is going on, then maybe you are approaching the whole thing in a very negative and unproductive way.

Anyway, as far as the cost of hiring no one goes, I'd love to hear from people who have gotten a chance and were denied tenure. How did they feel if they were told the committee wasn't all that interested in the first place, but they decided to just try them out and then cut them loose if it didn't work out. Their lives were disrupted, the orchestra was frustrated for a while...and all along the committee had had a pretty good idea that it wouldn't work out. Firing people who have been around a year, made friends, etc is painful for both sides. I just wonder what people who have had it happen to them would say about being "given a chance"

Number322, I do fully realize that those aren't basic reasons for casting away people, I was just using that as an example of how we can feel like after we play. I, for example, just feel like "what, was it that one note I squawked" or "oh no, I didn't do that crescendo enough!" type of thing. After I analyze it, I can acknowledge the good & not-as-good aspects about my audition & look at it in a slightly different light. I know there's much more to it than that blipping a note. I have read these forums enough (as well as experience & talking to other people) to have a pretty good (not fully, but a decent) understanding of how things go. Maybe (quite possibly, or even surely!) it's because most of the people I talk to about this are in the same boat as I am, so my thoughts are admittedly one-sided. But even after hearing it from the horses' mouth(s), we honestly just don't understand why this keeps happening. We're constantly told to not take it personally, but sometimes it's hard not to, especially when we just don't honestly know what else we could do. I know, I know, stop griping & go practice. Believe me, I do that enough, like everyone else. I'm still just trying to get as best an understanding of this process as I can. I really don't know what else to do.

Sorry to be blunt, but I'm sick of this argument popping up every couple of months, or every time some high-profile audition ends without a hire. The idea that we should hire someone at every audition just to do so (or just to make losing candidates feel better,) and then treat the probation process as an opportunity to correct our mistake is absurd, and there's no other word for it.

Others on this board have repeatedly said that making the finals is proof that someone was qualified for the job - this is not true. It means that someone was qualified to make the finals, and nothing more. In every orchestra I've been a part of, the final round is far more rigorous than the earlier ones, and is designed to turn up red flags that a 5-10 minute round earlier on could not. In my section, when we turn up such a red flag in the finals, but think it might have been due to nerves or might not be a disqualifying factor, we allow the candidate another chance to come back and play again, and specifically ask for the problem to be corrected. I've seen this happen at many other auditions as well. numbers322 is correct that, with one or two possible exceptions, no one is looking to toss a candidate for one wrong note or missed run.

Everyone in an orchestra got there the same way, and contrary to popular opinion around here, we haven't forgotten how difficult the process is. But we do not "owe it" to any candidate to make certain that we hire someone at the end of every audition. The only allegiance we have (or should have) is to our orchestra, and as such, we need to hire musicians we know will make it better. That's not to say that good and qualified musicians don't fall through the cracks at auditions - they do, all the time. (Every major orchestra musician has a story of washing out of an audition for a lesser orchestra.) But that problem would not be solved by flipping a coin and selecting a candidate at the end of a day in which everyone on the audition committee agrees that no one earned the job.

Finally, consider the impact of what you're proposing on the mythical players who would "win" an audition that nobody actually won. If the audition committee turns out to have been correct in their assessment that the player wasn't a good fit (and let's face it, this would certainly happen a good percentage of the time,) we would have a slew of musicians being denied tenure, one of the most demoralizing and ego-crushing events that can happen to a person. This would be productive? More fair? No, it would not.

Yes, it's frustrating not to be chosen, especially when there's no winner to point to. Few of us are egotistical enough to believe that we're the best musician in the world, so we can reasonably look at a winner and say, well, s/he was better today. But a no-hire offers no such solace, and somehow feels even more like a direct rejection. That sucks, but it doesn't translate to being unfair. It's just how life goes, sometimes.

I am still curious about what it costs the orchestra to put on an audition with 90-100 people. I understand the cons of hiring the wrong person and concede that being denied tenure could be worse than not getting the job in the first place.

The cost varies from orchestra to orchestra, but on the whole, it's probably less than you might imagine. Ads in the International Musician cost (I believe) less than $1000, and since candidates pay their own way, there are few other costs. Some personnel managers and/or libarians might earn overtime at an audition, but my impression is that most don't. Audition committees are usually either unpaid, or receive a small stipend which is truly miniscule (nothing like getting paid for a service, in other words.)

The greatest cost of any audition is probably the extra time put in by the library staff, who have to prepare and send out excerpts that can't be purchased elsewhere, and who also prepare folders of excerpts for the committee members and any candidates who arrive without them. This is a major undertaking in a department that is usually already overworked, but again, I don't know that the fiscal cost goes up very much as a result.

The substitute musician issue is more complicated, but in general, a sub is always less expensive than a member of the orchestra (especially when health coverage, which most subs don't receive, is factored in,) so orchestras don't lose money on labor costs when a position goes unfilled.

I have been told that an audition costs around $10,000 here in St Louis. There is the ad in the IM, but there is also usually a small fee paid to the committee members - say 50 bucks a day each which over several days of auditions can add up. There is also postage, library expenses and photocopying (we provide copies of the whole list to everyone). There have to be stage crew hired whenever the hall is in use, so add normal hourly wages for them too. A lot of orchestras don't own their hall, so there may be a fee for hall usage. You also have to pay staff members to work on what is sometimes their day off. I'm sure there are some other expenses that I'm not thinking of as well.

There are some cost benefits too to not hiring anyone. Subs don't have to be hired full time, and our orchestra does not provide benefits to our one-year replacements.

Hall rental fees are a good point, Josh. I hadn't thought of that, since it isn't an issue for my orchestra. As for stage crew, I believe that most full-time IATSE orchestra crews are salaried these days (albeit under a convoluted contract system where their salaries appear to be broken down to an hourly wage, but with a certain number of hours "guaranteed," which effectively turns their pay into a predictable salary, and prevents a great deal of overtime.)

While I agree with Josh that there can be cost benefits to hiring no one, I want to be sure that no one here gets the impression that this is ever considered as a reason for not hiring someone at an audition. Several orchestras have agreed to "hiring slowdowns" in recent years, under which open positions stay open for longer than would ordinarily be allowed by the contract, but that's much different than holding an audition and then hiring no one to save money. No musician on an audition committee would ever allow such a thing just to save management a few bucks.

I think the other thing to say is that some orchestras have better reputations than others when it comes to hiring. Minnesota, St. Louis, Cleveland have great reputations - Detroit has a horrible one, at least regarding section strings. I think it's the orchestras that hold multiple, literally five or six, auditions for section positions, receive many auditionees (upwards of a hundred), and rarely hire that cause real questioning of a committee's purposes and goals.

If it's at all helpful, I thought I'd share one manager's perspective on this. (Of course, I can't claim to speak for all!) But at my orchestra, no one is more frustrated when an audition results in a "no hire" than the administration. First and foremost, because we find that the best artistic situation is to have all contracts filled by full-time tenure track players. No matter what kind of wonderful contribution is being made by a player on one-year replacement, the ensemble is always better served by consistency. As noted by other posters here, the cost of an audition (though no where close to $10K in my experience) and more significantly the staff time required to coordinate hundreds of applicants, etc., etc., is not something any manager wants to repeat unecessarily. We may be crazy in other ways, but not when it comes to time and money!

The above being said, naturally, we want the best players, and the fact is, that when no-one wins the audition, no-one has earned the job. We'd rather go through the process until someone wins, rather than the gut-wrenching dismissal which destroys morale and results in another audition anyway.

Hope that sheds some light on the subject from another viewpoint.

Cheers

I do appreciate the feedback in here. I usually have a pretty good attitude & mood towards auditions, but lately that's starting to dwindle. I know the orchestras aren't holding audition after audition to intentionally make people mad & waste money, but that's what we feel like, & I hate feeling growingly frustrated about the whole process. I am curious about some other things still because I feel like there is a lot of conflicting information out there (not just in these forums, but auditions in general). Ok, so an orchestra holds an audition & doesn't hire anyone for the 2nd or 3rd time. Usually these orchestras are bigger & pay well, which of course is why they're picky. Should we not even bother to take these auditions in the first place, especially when they hold it the 3rd, 4th, or 5th time? I personally have taken auditions at these locations because the flights are usually cheaper & you can find better hotel deals, vs. smaller cities that don't even feel worth it financially if it only pays $15-20g & you have to pay, say, $300-400 for a flight. And what about 1-year positions? Should we wait until it's an actual opening instead of thinking "I'll try this audition & hopefully I'll get to play more than one year", & then if you win it, you'll still be in the same non-tenured situation of not having a job after a year? Another problem is this. What about experience, or lackthereof? Do orchestras hire on the basis of liking how you play, regardless if a player doesn't have enough professional experience, or age (like a young person with no experience compared to an older player with some subwork or who has played with smaller groups), or should players realistically start from something more modest, like per-service & work up to better paying gigs instead of just hoping to land something big? That's the feeling I'm getting in here based on players not being "qualified" enough or "earning" it. Maybe some of us are not making the right decisions as far as what kind of auditions to take (then again, there's the "how do you know unless you try" kind of false hope). I mean, if one has the financial resources (& the patience!) to take every audition, it's not a problem. But for many of us, it's not that easy, so what advice would you give us?

Experience is important, but more for some of us than for others. I would not have been able to win my current job - or keep it if I had won it - right out of college, and most musicians just starting out should aim lower than the Top 10 at the beginning. But some are just ready earlier - our last two viola hires were kids right out of school. The best way to get a read on where you stand is to find a good, tough orchestra player and play for them, then ask for an honest assessment of what level you ought to be striving for.

Frustration is, I think, the toughest battle to fight for all of us in this business, and none is worse than audition frustration, because of the secrecy involved in most auditions. When you're on the outside, and decisions aren't explained, there's nothing more frustrating. (By the way, I'm glad to hear that my orchestra has a good reputation in this regard, but in the interest of fairness, I should note that we have had several winnerless auditions in recent years.)

But if you can stomach it, I would always recommend continuing to audition. I have a friend, a violinist, who does not have anything approaching an elite conservatory pedigree, and who never enjoyed many of the musical advantages that a lot of us in the business did. All he had is persistence, talent, and one of the best work ethics I've ever seen. Over the last 10 years, he took at least six separate auditions for the Minnesota Orchestra and the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra, and was in the final round of nearly every one. He never got the job, and in several instances, no one else did either. (He had the same experience in auditions for other major orchestras as well.) Frustration doesn't begin to describe it. But he just kept working, ignored all the gossip and the backbiting, and this past summer, he walked into the latest audition for our orchestra, and absolutely blew away the field. He's now our associate principal second violin, and believe me, no one has ever done more to earn the position.

I've had a few negative things to say on this thread, so I thought I'd throw in a story with a happy ending...

Well, I personally think it's ridiculous to keep having auditions where over 100 people show up and not ever hire anyone. Someone was qualified for the job....it's got to be pretty rare to have that many people show up and not one of them happens to be good enough for the job!


"Others on this board have repeatedly said that making the finals is proof that someone was qualified for the job - this is not true. It means that someone was qualified to make the finals, and nothing more." Sam Bergman


People should be passed on to semi-final and final rounds with the idea that they ARE good enough for the job, not just good enough to pass on to the next round. I would never pass anyone on that I didn't think was qualified for the job.

I do not show up to auditions where they have a rep for not hiring anyone...meaning that they didn't hire anyone more than once. Again, there's a tenure process for deciding if the person is really qualified. Because some people can really play those excerpts, but can't blend into a section at all....

Interestingly, I have now been in the position of being both a finalist where no one was hired, and and a member of an audition committee where no one was hired.

The finalist experience came first. At the time, I felt like they should have given SOMEBODY a chance, just because hiring someone is better than hiring no one, and being in the finals ought to be proof of being good enough for the job. To a certain extent I still feel that way... BUT.

I've found that the way I think when listening to auditions is something like this:

Preliminaries - listening to eliminate people for basic problems, e.g. bad rhythm & pitch, and secondarily for Great Artistry. Usually you have to make the decision about advancing people without having heard everyone yet, so it's still a little bit speculative (maybe we will hear someone better later on, maybe we won't) -- all I can do is listen to see if I am interested in hearing more from each person.

In the 2nd round: now we are have, hopefully, eliminated the people whose playing is just not up to snuff, and are looking for musicians we want to work with. Sometimes someone who stood out in the prelims will also stand out in the semi's; it also happens often that someone who stood out in the prelims will crash in the semi's. Or someone who barely squeaked through will "turn it on" and sound great.

Finals: OK, now you're down to the interesting ones, and you're basically looking for a soul mate. It does become kind of amorphous and subjective at this point. The candidates are at something of a disadvantage because they [often] don't know exactly what the committee is looking for; sometimes the committee itself doesn't have a firmly established point of view. One person wants artistry, another will not concede perfect intonation, someone else doesn't care as long as the winner is cute & single. (I hope I'm just kidding with that last one...)

Anyway, it can become like dating: no one would say [would they?] "Well he fits all your requirements: he's smart, employed, taller than you, and he likes your mom; so why not get engaged? You can always call it off after a year if you decide not to marry him." It can seem seem like all the pieces have fallen into place, and yet somehow it's just not happening for you.

We have all known people are "too picky" and people who are not picky enough: they both invite their own kind of trouble.

[Disclaimer: I understand that hiring someone to play in an orchestra is not the same as choosing a spouse. This is an ANALOGY.]

So, having been on both sides of the experience, I have to say that now I sympathize more with the committee than I ever thought I would.

I think what Sam said is right on the money. As a participant you don't know what anyone else sounds like and therefore, you don't have a good basis on which to judge the outcome of any audition. Or for that matter, how you happen to stack up against all of the others. As far as passing people on from round to round,
BBodden is also right - all anyone earns from round to round is another chance to show their stuff. If I listened for someone to hire in the prelims, no one would make it to the semis - or at least only a couple. And that's not helping the process at all or giving auditioners the benefit of the doubt. There's a lot of nailbiting and anxiety on the other side of the audition curtain, believe it or not. Everyone wants the right candidate to win. And hiring somone thinking that they might not get tenure should be avoided if at all possible. When that happens it is disruptive and painful to everyone involved.

Auditions suck. It seems like an unfair way to gain entry into an exclusive club. And when no one gets hired, it makes the orchestra involved seem particularly elitist and snobbish. There are a lot of hurt and angry feelings involved - how can there not be when you put yourself on the line that way? No one likes rejection. But there is no better or fairer way that we've thought of to hire people. Violas - you have every right to decide which orchestras you want to put it out there for - I don't blame you for being frustrated at the system. But I don't see it changing any time soon.

gloria

I've got a question....why would you pass someone on if you didn't think they were good enough for the job?? Isn't that just teasing them....letting them think they might actually win the job?

Also, when there are over 100 people auditioning, how many of those do you think might be qualified for the job?

People are not perfect, and you probably won't find someone exactly "perfect" for the job....but you should give someone the chance if they sound great and you think they might fit in well and they have good experience....just my thoughts.

Well, first of all, there's a big difference between being perfect, and being a perfect fit for a given job. I would venture to say that there are plenty of musicians out there who are a perfect fit, and I'm pleased to have been a part of hiring several of them here in Minneapolis.

To answer your first question, I would never vote to advance anyone I was sure couldn't do the job. But if we could determine that about every candidate in one round, we would have one-round auditions. If there are 100 people at the audition, it's usually an easy thing to dismiss at least 70 after hearing them play for five minutes. This is good, because with that many applicants, five minutes is all we can spare in that first round, or we'd have to spread the audition over an entire week. To compensate for the limited time, most audition committees I've sat on have been willing to advance a candidate out of the first round if one or two people feel strongly about it, even if a majority isn't voting yes. This does mean that we probably end up advancing a few people who are grossly underqualified for the job, but that's okay - it's why we have a semifinal round. The finals are for candidates who a majority of the audition committee agrees have done everything necessary (so far) to win the job. Since the music director has the right to hire whomever s/he wants from the final round in most orchestras, the committee doesn't want anyone in that round who they don't think they'd be willing to work next to. None of this amounts to "teasing" anyone or advancing unqualified candidates on purpose. It's using the limited time we have to insure that everyone gets a fair shot.

As for how many out of 100 might be qualified, I have no earthly idea, and I would assume that it varies widely from audition to audition, depending on the date of the audition, the orchestra holding it, whether a titled chair is involved, and any number of other factors. My experience on audition committees in Minnesota suggests that, on average, about 50% of our candidates really have no business being there, and are wasting their time and money. (This is why I always advocate that musicians looking for a job play for someone in a major orchestra and get an honest assessment of what level they should be shooting for at the moment.) Some of that 50% might become good enough for this level at some point, but they aren't now, and it's immediately obvious the moment they begin to play. Another 25% or so are usually talented and have obviously worked hard, but have some glaring flaw that makes hiring them impossible. (Please note: one missed shift or blown dynamic change is not a glaring flaw. I'm talking about, say, a complete inability to play spiccatto, or chronic intonation problems.) The rest of the field - who knows? Give any of them a good day or three, and they could probably win the job. Oh, and the people who waltz in and, seemingly effortlessly, make it impossible not to hire them? I'd say that's less than 1% of applicants, and Lord knows it wasn't me when I won my job.

Again, I understand the frustration of auditions, and I would echo what gloriarex said, that if you suspect an orchestra isn't playing fair, you have every right not to waste your time at their audition. But in general, auditions work. If they didn't, great orchestras wouldn't stay great for very long. And the point of an audition isn't to give everyone there a nice warm feeling, it's to improve your orchestra. That's just the way life is.

Just one last comment, Violas. Prelims are rarely more than 6-7 minutes long. How can you reasonably expect to know whether or not you want to hire someone based on such a short time? The purpose of having more than one round is to let those who do well in the prelims have another chance and another 8-10 minutes to further impress you. And following that, finals are often 12-15 minutes long. You want to have as much information as possible about someone; their playing ability, their musicality, their flexibility before you hire them for what is, in some orchestras, a lifetime position.

Yes, orchestras have really high standards. But we do eventually fill our vacances (most of us!)and when they are finally filled, they are filled with people who are worth waiting for. I don't think orchestras should apologize for wanting the very best. It's harsh, but there it is.

gloria