Sunday, June 22, 2008

Auditions 4

While at the Chorus America/NPAC conference in Denver, a group of conductors talked about auditions. Some additional ideas for auditioning:

- using excerpts from standard repertoire that all singers have to prepare (e.g. "And He Shall Purify" from Messiah to show ability with coloratura)

- conduct singer in an assigned excerpt to see how they follow/react to conductor

- additional exercises for ear testing: playing chords or clusters and asking singer to sing the middle pitch played

- do sight-reading in a quartet (you'd have a returning quartet on tap--new singers would replace one of the members and read)

- language: have 4-5 excerpts in different languages for the auditionee to read out loud

2 comments:

discorax said...

Wow, I'm really going to have to get my vocal technique back into shape when I return to singing. I was reading through your audition notes and they really put the singers through the paces!

The Messiah excerpt is familiar at least since I sing that every Christmas :)

- Ryan Davidson

Richard said...

Hey, Ryan! Not EVERYONE does all this stuff (and neither do I).

Hope you do get to do some singing at some point.

All the best,

Richard