My wife hates February. It has nothing to do with an aversion to Ground Hogs OR a dislike for George Washington or Abraham Lincoln OR misgivings about designating February as Black History Month OR frustration with what to get her husband for his birthday. No, she is disgruntled about February because that’s the month when she spends all four Saturdays as a glum Faculty Widow while I am at Carthage with my faculty colleagues, listening to the auditions of prospective music students competing for one of our music scholarships. And on a busy day like yesterday, it means listening from 10:20 in the morning until 4:00 in the afternoon.
I can’t say that spending the Saturdays in February this way makes me deliriously happy… not when you’ve worked pretty hard all week and not when Sunday is far from a day off. But to be honest, I actually enjoy this experience quite a lot- especially compared to what it used to be like when I first began hearing auditions some seventeen years ago. Back then, there were fewer auditions than there are now- so all of us listened to ALL of them… every flutist, every pianist, every bongo drummer. There was also a much wider range of skills, with more than a few auditions over the years that would not be out of place amongst the infamous rejects of American Idol. Now that made for a long hard day! But then a more concerted effort at recruitment began to turn the tide, and Carthage began to attract more and more interest from a higher calibre of students and musicians. Eventually, there were enough prospective students auditioning that the voice teachers and choral directors heard only vocal auditions in one room and the instrumental folks were next door, hearing the rest. What a difference! And now we have so many young people interested in auditioning that we sometimes have simultaneous voice auditions taking place in two different rooms, all afternoon long. (As problems go, this is just about the best one you could possibly have.)
So what happens in those twenty minutes? Plenty. Each student comes prepared to sing two songs for us- after which we vocalize them to further acquaint ourselves with their voice, its range, their vocal technique, etc. From there, we test their ear-training and sight-reading. But just as important as all that is the time we take to get to know the student, to try and get a sense of whether or not Carthage would be a good place for them and whether or not they would be a good addition to the music community at Carthage. I suppose once in awhile someone walks in to audition who reeks with arrogance or “attitude”, leading us to pray silently to ourselves “dear God, please lead him or her to another school to we won’t have to deal with their crap.” But by and large, almost everyone who auditions for us is a really good person and someone we see as a potentially great addition to the Carthage family.
It’s especially neat when we will encounter someone who has achieved their level of success under less than ideal circumstances. This year I especially remember the audition of a young lady from somewhere in Illinois whose high school completely eliminated music…. meaning that in order for her to sing in a choir, she had to drive herself 15 miles after school to get to the rehearsal for something called the HUB choir, created for the singers from three different schools who had all lost their choir directors and their choral programs. Talk about a sad story- but also an inspiring one, because we knew that the student auditioning for us had to care a great deal about singing to put forth that kind of effort to keep it in her life. We’ll also often hear singers who are clearly blessed with tremendous talent but who have never had a voice lesson in their lives, either because their family couldn’t afford it or because they live someplace where those opportunities simply don’t exist. On the other hand, a young man who auditioned for us yesterday really made me smile as he described the choir program in his high school back in the Twin Cities – and his every other sentence began with the words “I’m so blessed…” He happened to be someone who also played football and lacrosse, but you could just sense his profound appreciation for the role of music in his life. And I was so pleased a couple of weeks ago when a private voice student of mine, when asked why he aspired to be a choir director, spoke with captivating eloquence about the young lives he had seen be changed by the devoted work of his choir director… who just happens to be my sister-in-law, Polly Amborn… and how he wanted to be a similar sort of catalyst for change himself. Eduardo Garcia-Novelli, the conductor of the Carthage Choir, was speaking for most of us in the room, I think, when he said that this was the best answer to that frequently-posed question that he had ever heard.
Of course, lots of the young people who come and audition for us aren’t able to put much of anything into words – or might have only the vaguest sense of where they hope music will take them in their lives- and in those cases, I’m always delighted at the gently probing and insightful questions that my colleagues will pose to them, not to direct them in any particular direction but to help them sort out just what they want and why, and the best way to make it happen. When we get done with a day of auditions, I find myself deeply grateful for the fine men and women with whom I teach, who are not only very very good at what they do, but are genuinely good people as well.
Now comes the toughest part . . . dividing our finite scholarship funds amongst all of these worthy young people. That’s the toughest part and I’m glad that people much smarter than I am have the ultimate responsibility for those decisions. I’m glad that my responsibility consists of hearing these auditions, accompanying most of them, getting to know these thoroughly likable and often very impressive young people…. and sometime down the road, welcoming many of them back to Carthage as students, to be nurtured and loved.
pictured above: My colleagues Dimitri Shapovalov and Amy Haines listen to one of the young people who auditioned for us yesterday afternoon. This happens to be the aforementioned young man who spoke so winningly about being “so blessed” by the choral music program at his high school. By the way, another highlight of the day came when we heard a very impressive LOW bass from Illinois who turned out to sing in the same church choir as our dear friend Ted Repsholdt. These auditions sometimes yield absolutely delightful “it’s a small world” moments but in all of my years doing this, that’s one of the best.