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Auditions V – What do you prioritize?

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After the long audition process you’ve gone through (well, long enough, anyway!), you have to make decisions as to who’s in your choir(s). Difficult choices will always be a part of this if you have an auditioned choir. What do you prioritize? How do you make these choices?
 
The comments here are for those who have relatively advanced singers, so this (as with much of this series) might not speak to as large a number of conductors. But I hope it’s still helpful and of interest.
 
First, how do you treat returning members of the ensemble? Are they automatically in? Do they have any “skin in the game” during auditions? I’ve almost always required re-auditions, but it’s been incredibly rare for me not to take a previous member of the choir. Loyalty (assuming they’ve been a responsible member of the choir) goes both ways!
 
However, I’ve known of a few conductors who rate their singers on a scale and take the top rated singers, without regard to previous membership. A legitimate choice–but what do you think? Do you do this? Could you do this?
 
Second, one can prioritize (this is broadly stated!) either vocal sound or musicianship/ear. What’s most important to you? The very best voices? The best sightreaders?
 
Obviously, this is a vast oversimplification, but there is an element here that is important–your choices will have consequences. If you find yourself frustrated with the speed with which your choir can work, did you prioritze quality of voice too highly? Or, if you’re unhappy with the sound of your choir, did you leave some really fine singers with great instruments out of your choir because their reading was poor?
 
If we all had the perfect situation, we’d have fantastic voices connected with unbelievable musicianship and experience–but then we probably wouldn’t be a good enough conductor to work with them!
 
In reality, choices are a balance–one looks for the combination of voice/musicianship which will create the best choir. The real choices are at the margins–with the majority of the singers it’ll be pretty clear whether they belong in the choir or not. But decisions for the last few singers in each section can be difficult (even agonizing) and here’s where the needs of the ensemble can help with the decision. Do you need a particular voice type (a high soprano? soprano with a warm lower voice?)? Have you already chosen some beautiful voices for the section, but some whose reading is poor? In that case, you might choose a fantastic reader (without a great voice) who can help that section learn more quickly and give musical leadership. On the other hand, you might need a voice that other voices can use as a model of the kind of sound you need–even if their musicianship isn’t of the highest level.
 
And what about the intangibles (perhaps not so intangible!)–personality, leadership qualities–those things we might put into the overall term, “character.” Is the singer committed, enthusiastic, energetic, a good leader? These are elements we also should consider.
 
If you have thoughts about how you make your final choices, please share them!
 
All the best with your choirs this year–may your audition choices turn out to be wonderful ones.
 
 

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Comments

  1. Great additions from both of you! I think your idea, Joshua, of calling it a “hearing” is a good and honest one.
     
    When conducting a professional chamber choir, I had regular auditions and they were “real”–occasionally, not regularly, a singer wasn’t taken back in to the group. I believe that’s continued with my successor. For many professional choirs in Europe it’s a different story because they’re unionized (the German choirs, notably)–in which case it’s very difficult to remove a member who’s no longer performing at the high level expected. The Swedish Radio Choir is a different story, since it’s half-time and not unionized. The choir has, in fact, resisted that move, in part because they know the quality of the choir is dependent on the quality of the members. They re-audition every other year until they’re 50 or 55, I can’t remember which, when they have to reaudition every year. They’re given feedback, so they know how they’re being evaluated and where weaknesses are–I’ve always tried to do that with my singers as well, and will talk to singers who didn’t make my choir at UNT (for example) to let them know what I heard in the audition. That seems only fair–and can lead to greater growth if they work on those weaknesses and improve.
     
    When I took over the Seattle Symphony Chorale in 1990, they’d just gone through a tough year with something like 7 different conductors, all of whom were candidates. The Music Director of the SSO therefore asked me not to do auditions that first year. I complied of course, although set up times for people to sing for me so I could get to know their voices better. I did auditions for returning choir members in the spring and (with the help of the choir secretary and mail merge) sent a note to everyone about the results of their audition. We also used repertoire from the season, so I could see if they really had it learned and were independent enough to sing their part on their own (with piano acct.). Some were immediately accepted for the fall, but others were asked to re-audition in the late summer (our regular audition time to hear new singers) and were given specific feedback about what I felt needed work. The Chorale also arranged to have sightreading classes (which we also offered to other choruses in Seattle), a voice class, and recommended voice teachers with whom to study. A number of singers simply used this as a reason to retire and didn’t return. Most (not all) who re-auditioned made improvements and sang with the chorus the following year.
     
    David Willcocks, by the way, said that with the Bach Choir (which was apparently not very good when he took it over) he’d suggest in an audition that, “Perhaps after this year it would be a good time to retire from the choir.” That allowed the singer to sing a final year with the choir and to then retire (or decide not to re-audition), with no one the wiser that, in fact, they’d essentially been told that they wouldn’t be taken back next year.
     
    As to Jon’s comments, I certainly agree. If you look at the earlier blog post here, see the process Richard Nance goes through with his top choir–it’s designed to test exactly those kinds of abilities. I would love to do that here at UNT, but the schedule is such that I couldn’t extend my auditions that way without slowing the process and making life more difficult for the rest of the choirs.
     
    I also know that there are some conductors who have some choir members from the previous year sit in on auditions (or a recall) and give their feedback (although I doubt they have an equal vote). If anyone does this or knows of someone who does, let us know about how that procedure works. At UNT, since I have TA’s, they sit in on the recall auditions and I solicit their feedback as I’m making decisions. I normally ask for their opinions before I give them mine–I want them to think independently without my influence, and then we discuss all areas where we disagree. It’s important for them to do this, since they’ll be doing this themselves in a year or two.
     
    Again, thanks for great comments!

  2. This topic is very timely for me. We are doing a unit in an undergraduate choral methods class on assessment and auditions, looking especially at the transitions from elementary to middle school, from middle school to high school, and from high school to college. In this age of statistical assessment, we are looking for facets, elements to prioritize, and language to faciliate an efficient and accurate audition or assessment process. We’ve come up with a number of facets we want to consider: quality of vocal tone, useable melodic range, dynamic range, musical literacy, facility with language and with such tools as IPA, and, perhaps most significantly, with the ability to work through a mistake to its solution and learn to transfer that solution to another parallel problem.
     
    I can completely appreciate the position on loyalty to returning members, but, it seems to me, the real issue is that the returning members who will make the strongest contribution to the success of the new choir are the ones who learned the most during the last term and these are not the individuals who would fail an audition. At least at this University, those strong students would much rather re-audition than tolerate the status-quo of those who did not pay attention and improve their ability to be outstanding singing musicians.
     
    I think the audition goals should be syncronized with the Student Learning Outcomes that at least we (at this University) must list on the course syllabus. For me those are: vocal tone, musical leadership, and ability to self-correct and transfer training from one situation to another. I solicit the assistance of the students to  allow me to assess their development in order to improve my ability to help them succeed. I believe this takes some of the negative out of the re-audition process.
     
    We are, hopefully, not only Choral Conductors but also Choral Ensemble teachers. The academic choral ensemble is the laboratory for the development of skills in turning written notes into musical sounds, drawing on the students’ increasing awareness of singing technique, diction skills, sight-reading and musicianship skills, style, and performance practice. The rehearsal conductor should be teaching to student learning outcomes and an audition (or re-audition) is as much a measure of the success of that teaching as it is an assessment of the student’s attention to the class.
     
    And, in the words of the previous writer: “and I acknowledge I could be wrong, too.”

  3. For my top college choir, my rules for reauditions are that incoming second year students must do a full reaudition. Anyone who has completed two years of choir with good grades is automatically back in, but I want to hear them again at audition time, and I will ask them to do the sight reading and all that. If they received a D or an F in the past year, they must also do a full reaudition. 
     
    Logic is this: as you said, loyalty goes both ways. For most undergrad choirs, by the time they get to their third year in choir, the audition is clearly a formality (this could be debated to happen in the fourth year, but regardless, it does happen). Upperclass singers don’t come in with the same feeling of pressure (though there is still some, especially when we sight read…just reading by yourself in front of someone is inherently somewhat stressful for most undergrads), even when it is a “real” audition. So I chose to call it what it effectively is: a “hearing.”
     
    Most people that I talk to object exactly on the basis you mentioned of having skin in the game. My feeling is that everyone in the room sort of knows that by the time your third year comes around, you are going to get back in, unless you’ve done something egregious. So I elect to call a spade a spade. But that’s my approach. I don’t think the other way is necessarily wrong. And I acknowledge I could be wrong, too.

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