Featured Article in CMT: What It Takes to Ace Your Auditions

Written by Ory Shihor

This feature article was originally published in the California Music Teacher magazine

Volume 44 | Number 1 | Spring 2020

Printed Publication

What It Takes to Ace Your Auditions

Written by Ory Shihor

This feature article was originally published in the California Music Teacher magazine Volume 44 | Number 1 | Spring 2020

When I arrived in the U.S. in the 1980s, I heard a joke that has apparently been circling around since the 1950s. The opening question, “How can I get to Carnegie Hall?” was, in most versions of the joke, answered by a New York cab driver with apparent great insight into what it takes to make it in the performing arts: he wisely responded: “Practice, practice, practice.” 

If only it were that simple.

So, I thought I should open by examining this long-held belief that if one wants to perform at Carnegie Hall, or get accepted to Juilliard or any other prestigious institution, one must practice obsessively above and beyond anything else.

If we follow Malcolm Gladwell’s “10,000 hours to mastery” rule and place a seven-year-old pianist on a 20-hour-per-week practice regimen for 10 years, the young child should supposedly achieve total mastery of the instrument by the time he or she applies to music schools at 17. Becoming a well-rounded musician, however, doesn’t just take place at the piano; music isn’t created in a vacuum, and young pianists should not spend most of their precious childhoods inside a practice room. 

Furthermore, what may have worked for classical pianists (and other single-minded professionals, for that matter) 50 years ago—to become an expert in one thing and feverishly focus on that one thing only—might be an outdated model in today’s world. We now live in an era that requires us to become Renaissance persons or at least professional “dabblers,” great at one thing but good at many things, and for that one needs to step outside of the practice room once in a while. 

Today’s serious piano students applying to top conservatories and university music schools need to ask themselves why they want to pursue a college degree in music, how this educational path fits within the arts realm, and how it might relate to other fields that are at times removed from music by several degrees of separation. If students don’t search for answers to these sorts of questions, they may end up missing the creative forest for the trees and arrive at their college auditions sounding flashy, but without much substance. 

In a way, a student’s performance at a college audition is a culmination of everything learned and absorbed up to that moment in time. It is the “moment of truth”—there are no sleight-of-hand tricks or shortcuts here—and cramming right before the auditions as one might do prior to a final exam or driving license test will only cause mental and physical exhaustion.

Placing the obvious pianistic prerequisite and deep love for the art form aside, a spot in a top music school requires depth of personality, intellectual curiosity, and a healthy appetite for knowledge (particularly for pianists, since the piano repertoire demands this fusion of intellect and depth perhaps more than that of any other instrument). When putting together an audition program, therefore, this amalgam of qualities must rise to the surface. 

In an audition program, it’s very important to feature repertoire that truly brings out the student’s unique voice. One must avoid programs that may seem impressive on paper, but don’t necessarily reflect the student’s qualities. Repertoire choices alone don’t get students accepted—the interpretation of the repertoire is what gets them accepted. It’s when students perform pieces they truly “feel,” love, and believe in that their talent and passion for the music comes alive, and their playing becomes much more impactful and convincing as a result. 

The ideal audition program will balance the student’s current playing ability with their potential to grow within the time frame allotted for refining their program. Therefore, including pieces that are a bit outside of the student’s comfort zone is not only okay, but encouraged; it’s how we all grow at any stage and at any level. Something happens when we learn a new piece; we are starting from a clean slate, and with it comes an opportunity to discover, evolve, and confront new challenges. 

Whether or not students should include “older” pieces in their audition program is an interesting dilemma. By older pieces, I refer to those that the student may have been playing for a long time, perhaps one or two years and maybe more. On the one hand, the student is undoubtedly comfortable playing the piece, but on the other hand, there might be a certain loss of interest or inspiration that may translate to an inferior representation of the student’s current ability and potential.

If older pieces are included, I strongly suggest that the student works on those pieces regularly and weaves them into the practice routine. Older repertoire takes practice and “maintenance” work; it should not be assumed that it’s a finished product.

…it takes approximately 12–24 months to prepare a new program from scratch.

Practically speaking, starting to learn an audition program early is of utmost importance. On average, it takes approximately 12–24 months to prepare a new program from scratch. This, of course, depends on the program’s difficulty level and the student’s learning pace and available practice time, so the exact time frame required to be fully prepared will differ from student to student. For those who require additional preparation time due to a heavy high school workload, for example, a gap year would be a valid option and should be considered. 

In an audition, one never knows which piece, or which section of a piece, the student will be asked to perform. It is therefore very important to give equal attention to all pieces and sections during practice. It is a natural tendency in all of us to sometimes overlook working on pieces or sections that might seem “easier” or simpler, such as slow movements, in favor of something really difficult that demands our attention. When we practice, we usually start at the beginning, and by the time we get midway through the piece we run out of practice time! This tendency can be overcome by predetermining which sections will be covered during each practice session.

For students to learn a program well, every new piece must go through a full cycle from note learning, internalizing, and memorizing to refining and performing. This is why it’s crucial to work on the entire program simultaneously, as opposed to leaving certain pieces “off the table” and learning those at a later date.

Run-throughs are a highly effective way to help the student refine the audition program and deepen the relationship with the music beyond memorization. The lion's share of the refinement process happens when students experience performing the program in front of an audience (beyond just the teacher and family members) and subsequently fine-tune it by reviewing the performance video. Ideally, this review should take place no later than 24 hours after the performance. This is hard, grueling work, but it’s truly one of the most effective ways to refine a program.

When playing through the program, the student will learn how to maintain an even energy level throughout. Endurance is something one cannot practice when performing the program in segments; controlled, comfortable pacing is one of the hardest things to achieve when refining a new piece or program. 

One word of caution: Run-throughs should only be scheduled when the student is prepared. There is no need for perfection, but an unprepared performance may have a negative effect on the student and damage their confidence.

Finally, I have managed to avoid mentioning talent thus far, so I decided to keep it for the end. Although it’s true that no one has ever suffered from being overly gifted, talent alone (at least based on the traditional definition of the term) won’t get anyone very far. If two equally “gifted” students have the exact same access to educational opportunities, and only one of them possesses the desire to work hard, the one without drive will eventually wilt away. Therefore, for me, the line between innate ability and its cultivation and refinement is often blurred. Where does talent end and the cultivation of that talent begin? Perhaps the definition of talent should include the ability to refine oneself through dedication, drive, and willpower—all prerequisites at top music schools.