I’ll be auditioning for UofT tomorrow. I’m am extremely nervous and anxious and scared and worried. I want it to go well so badly. I wish I could feel excited and happy since I’m going to be conducting and I love to conduct, but I’m more nervous than anything. I’ll be conducting the MacMillan Singers. The standards are very high and I’m hoping I can perform up to their expectations, or at least not make a fool of myself. I want to feel good about this but I am just scared and feeling a lot of pressure to do well especially since I’ve already received a rejection from Alberta and haven’t heard anything from either Western or Memorial. As of right now, this is the last bit of control I have in this process unless I get an audition invitation from Memorial. So, I’m feeling a little bit like my graduate school hopes are resting on tomorrow.
I know this is a terrible feeling to go into an audition with. I should feel completely confident and go in like I’m going to rock it. I wish I could feel like that now, but I don’t so I’ll have to fake the confidence tomorrow I guess. It’s not like I haven’t done that before.
I’ll be conducting the ‘Credo’ from the Bach B Minor Mass and Movement 1 of ‘Suite de Lorca’ by Rautavaara.
Anyway, wish me luck. Hopefully everything will go swimmingly.
It’s the waiting that is killing me. Of all the things in this whole graduate school application and audition process it is the waiting that upsets and frustrates me the most. Waiting to hear your fate as your vision of your entire future hangs in the balance.
I’m waiting to hear back from Memorial University about whether or not I will be invited for an audition in March. I’m nearly going bonkers waiting. I should be hearing the results any day now and the longer it takes the more anxious and nervous I get. This isn’t even the acceptance stage, this is only to see whether I make it to live auditions or not. Even if I’m invited I still have to fly out there and perform and I could still flunk it just like Alberta. But of course the first bridge to cross it getting to that audition and so I’m waiting.
I really want to audition for Memorial. The more I learn about the program and the more I listen to people talk about the school and how wonderful St. John’s is and how wonderful the student environment is and how wonderful the music culture is in Newfoundland the more I want to go. But I can’t go yet because I’m waiting.
I really worry that I won’t get an invitation. If I don’t that effectively reduces my chances of getting into grad school this year down to two schools: Western and U of T. I don’t like those odds. Oh, that reminds me, I’m also waiting to hear from Western on the fate of that application.
I keep telling myself I got an audition invitation from UofT based on the DVD I sent in and I sent in the same DVD to Memorial, so there shouldn’t really be any reason that I get an invitation from UofT but not Memorial. If I was good enough for UofT I should be good enough for Memorial, right?! UofT is supposed to be the really hard school with extremely high standards; their audition process asks for much more than any other school. But then I think maybe Memorial doesn’t care about UofT standards and they just won’t give me an audition regardless of what UofT thinks of my DVD.
You see what happens in all this waiting! I have no control, I have to idea what’s going to happen and all I have is time to spend waiting and worrying myself sick with all the “what if’s” that I can’t possibly answer until I get a letter in my mail box. GAAAAHH! It’s driving me nuts! I just want to go to grad school. That’s all I want. Is that really so much to ask? I would also just like someone to let me know where I stand and what is happening with my applications. Someone, please just tell me.
Even if it’s bad news, I’ll be terribly upset and sad and I’ll mope around for a good long while, but at least I’ll know and I can stop this incessant worrying. Granted, I’ll start worrying about something else, namely another year of being out of school and living a directionless life.
The first ever performance of “If Thou Wilt, Remember” happened last Thursday night at the Toronto Waldorf School. It was a stunning performance. I’m so happy to have been there.
I can’t even describe the feeling I had when I heard those first two bars of piano intro. I began to tear up in that moment it was so overwhelming and wonderful. I was hearing my piece for the first time. That was the first time I’d head that opening played in a formal performance by someone other than myself. The choir sang with such sensitivity and attention to the text. I felt they really had put thought into the meaning of the words and had contemplated the depth of the poem. I am so honoured that they performed my piece and even more honoured that they enjoyed it so much. After the performance I was nearly instantaneously surrounded by members of the choir wanting to talk to me about the piece. I was gratified and rather surprised. I had not expected such an out pouring of positive feedback.
I can not wait for the next performance of the work which I think will be when Vox Humana performs it in April. It will be a different experience I’m sure working and rehearsing the piece myself rather than simply listening to a performance by another group. I’m also even more excited about the up coming release of my newest work “Sweet Child” and am wondering who will be the first to perform that one. It’s all very exciting and gratifying stuff.
I received an official response from the University of Alberta today. I have not been accepted into the program. I know I said I wouldn’t be surprised if it happened, but it still hurts and I’m feeling a little down right now. It’s also made me even more nervous about my up coming University of Toronto audition next week.
I’m extremely anxious to get into a program for next fall. I don’t know what I’ll do if I have to do another year of being out of school and sort of aimlessly drifting through my life. I just want to get back into school and do this masters.
Well, I guess I have to put this rejection behind me and move on to the next audition. And it’s not like I’ve never experienced rejection before. It’s something of a constant in an artistic career, but it doesn’t mean it feels any less awful each time it happens.
My old high school has written me up in their online newsletter. A few weeks ago I was contacted by one of the grade eleven students with a series of questions on the topic of “If Thou Wilt, Remember” and my general experiences as a university music student and composer. My answers have been compiled into a nice composer biography and interview. You can check it out here.
I can’t wait to go hear the performance. I’ve been looking forward to it for nearly a month now. I even went shopping and picked out an outfit for the evening. I’m going to go looking like I’m just effortlessly fabulous and have my life all pulled together- even if I really don’t.
I really need to enjoy all these good feelings of accomplishment and competence this week because next week is my University of Toronto audition and I’m even more terrified of it than I was for my U of Alberta audition.
This is so totally exciting! “If Thou Wilt, Remember” is being premiered in two weeks by my old high school choir. The Toronto Waldorf School will be holding their annual arts evening and the chamber choir will be singing my piece. I’m going to Toronto to hear it.
They’ve been working on it for a little while now and I’ve been getting some really great feedback. Word is everyone really likes the piece. I even heard that there have been tears in rehearsal. I can’t even say how flattered all this makes me feel and so completely validated. It’s one thing to have your publisher and your family say your work is good, it’s another to have people who aren’t closely connected to you in the “real world” say it’s good. I wrote the piece to be enjoyed by choirs and I thought a lot about the experience of the chorister. I wrote with them in mind at all times, tailoring my piece to suite what I thought would be most satisfying to perform. It’s so gratifying to hear that that work has paid off.
I was asked to do an interview for the school newsletter as a promotional piece before the event which I was more than happy to do. One of the grade 11 students in the choir sent me a list of extremely insightful and thoughtful questions relating to the piece, my musical background and my approach to composition. I will undoubtedly post links when they send it out.
In related news, I’ve started rehearsal of the same piece with Vox Humana and it’s going very well. It’s so much fun to actually get to hear the piece. It brings a whole to perspective to a work that I supposedly know inside and out. I keep finding things in the piece I never knew where there.
I can’t wait for Waldorf to perform it. I want to hear a performance of my piece that I am completely uninvolved with and hear what they might bring out that I might not have ever thought of. It will be interesting to compare the two experiences between hearing a performance that I am not involved with and conducting a performance later that I am intimately involved with from start to finish.
Anyway, the Waldorf premier of “If Thou Wilt, Remember” will be on February 18th!
My University of Alberta Audition was a couple weeks ago. The trip was certainly an experience. Before then I’d never flown anywhere by myself before. I learned quickly that flying is pretty much idiot proof. You just show up really early and follow the signs with pictures. You don’t even have to read anything. I think I would have had to try to screw it up.
I stayed with the family of a family friend and that was fun. They were really nice and so incredibly generous to open their doors to a virtual stranger for two days and drive her around Edmonton.
The audition itself was okay. It was not my best conducting performance, but it wasn’t my worst either. The choral history and term definition test through some curve balls that I hadn’t anticipated. Also, I had been expecting the score except identification test to be aural, but it wasn’t. Instead of listening to excerpts from choral works and identifying them, a process I’ve been used to and rather good at since first year, I was given copies of scores to identify. I am not used to simply looking at a part of a score and being able to identify the work. As it was there were several pieces that I could easily identify, however there were a couple excerpts that were clearly from a mass or requiem, but I wasn’t sure which one and I knew if I could only hear them I would be able to tell. It was completely frustrating.
Anyway, as I said, it was not my best performance, but it wasn’t bad either, so I have hope but I also will not be surprised if I am not accepted into the program. However, what that audition did do was give me a really good idea of what the next auditions will be like and what I need to focus more on and better prepare. My hope is that by the time I get to my final audition in St. John’s I’ll be a pro!
Next up is my University of Toronto audition on February 25th.
