Schools update

I was accepted into UNL, but rejected from Iowa. No word on assistantships from either UNL or Wright State yet, so I'm still waiting for that.

Krista has gotten calls back to interview at a few schools this week: Norfolk Catholic, Archbishop Bergan Catholic (Fremont), Bancroft-Rosalie, and Bertrand.

It has been a crazy couple of weeks.

Assistantship Results

Assistantship results came in an email from Dr. Miles immediately after band today:

" We had 3 Graduate Teaching Assistant positions open this year and had 10 applicants for these positions.  I plead your case to the rest of the faculty as they discussed the strengths of their applicants as well.  At this time, you are first on the waiting list for a Graduate Teaching Assistantship should one of the other three reject our offers. "

Not as good as I had hoped, but it is highly possible that one of the three chosen applicants will take an assistantship somewhere else. I guess this means I will still be waiting for a final update.

Audition #3 Done

My visit to Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio was pretty awesome. I arrived at about 2pm to warm up briefly and meet the professor, Dr. Ben Miles. Dr. Miles seems like a really good teacher and a good guy in general. After giving me a tour of the department's facilities and letting me listen to the Wind Symphony's rehearsal, he led me to the recital hall so that I could warm up more for the audition. The recital hall is basically a tiny lecture hall with a piano on the stage... for WSC students, think along the lines of the art room (19?), but a bit bigger, a raised stage, and theatre seating and lighting. My audition went very well, I played Hindemith 1 and 3, as well as Civilization 1 and 3. Immediately after the audition, Dr. Miles told me that I was basically 'in', but that assistantships would not be decided until today.

After the audition, I sat in with the Tuba/Euph studio as they rehearsed for their studio recital on the 15th. The ensemble played a Gabrielli piece that I recognized and John Stevens' The Liberation of Sisyphus, with grad student John Hardisky of the Air Force Band of Flight playing the crazy solo part. Like much of John Stevens' work, it was pretty fun to play.

After a quick supper at Penn Station (a really good sub shop), we had a lesson. Dr. Miles pushed me a bit, and gave me some great pointers for the Hindemith. After the lesson, we went and watched the Wind Symphony concert. They were sounded very good, and played pieces by Steven Bryant and John Mackey that I really enjoyed. All in all, this was a very pleasant visit, and I left feeling very excited about the possibility of studying there.

...& Brasswind Visit

So yesterday, I visited the Woodwind and Brasswind store in South Bend. Wow.

I wish I would have had my camera with me, because it is almost indescribable. The tuba room was simply awesome: literally 30+ tubas in this one room. I spent 4 hours playing around on F tubas and CC tubas. I would have loved to look through the other rooms, but I just ran out of time. I found a couple of horns that I really enjoyed. One was the MW 45-SLZ (you are right Josh, this horn sounds fantastic), which was a rotary valve F. I also liked the MW Kodiak F and the Miraphone Petrushka, but my favorite was that 45-SLZ. Some CC tubas I tried were Miraphone 188, 1291 in silver, 1292, MW Thor, 2155, Gronitz PCK, and Besson 995 (German-made). I also tried out the MW Travel F... it is ridiculously small, and plays pretty well. Overall, it was a fun trip. Now I have to get ready for my last audition.

Audition #2 Done

Greetings from South Bend, Indiana and Eastern time.

Holy cow, has it really been 2 weeks since I blogged?

Yesterday was a long day of driving. I started at 9am from Wayne and got to Iowa City at about 3pm for my audition. I didn't realize that the 'old mall' that UI's school of music had relocated to temporarily was just that: an old shopping mall. After the audition and stopping to fuel up (again), change, eat, &c, &c, I left from Iowa City at about 6pm, and drove to Indiana through southern Chicago, arriving in South Bend at about 10:45pm CST (11:45 local time). What a long drive!

The audition went very well, and I feel that I showed off what I was capable of. I played through Hindemith 1 and 3 with a few mistakes, but tried to keep it very musical, and Marcello 1 and 2 went just a bit better. I really felt like I NAILED the orchestral excerpts (Ride, Die Meistersinger, Symphonic Metamorphosis, and Prokofiev 5).