'Twas the Night Before...

by JW

It’s the eve of a big Peabody bass holiday – Mock Day. Tomorrow, our students will do their mock auditions, which function as the final exam of their orchestra excerpts class. Peabody runs its orchestra excerpts class on a two year curriculum, which you can see here. As the end of each semester approaches, we take this large list and produce the dreaded “short list,” a somewhat smaller list of specific sections that may appear on the mock auditions. (The name is a bit misleading as the short list can be pretty long.) The students are all working hard on the short list, preparing for the auditions tomorrow. After the auditions we have a departmental meeting to cover any items we need to address over the break, and to say goodbye to everyone before they leave on winter break.

I like Mock Day because it reminds me of the orchestra placement auditions that all the students did for us at the beginning of the semester. While these two events aren’t related, they both are a chance for the three of us (no Mike for these) to hear all the classical bass students playing the same music in sequence. It provides a great snapshot of where everyone is and what sort of progress folks have made over the semester. When we get together in May for juries and Spring mock auditions, I can place those beside tomorrow’s auditions to again see everyone’s progress as we head into the summer vacation.

I’ll let you know how it goes after tomorrow…. In the meantime, Happy Mock Day Eve and sleep well.