Is this the House that Mozart Built?

I had an audition today with the local symphony. I started the morning off by pacing through my house. It wasn't out of anxiety, as much as just being unable to think of what to do with my time. Eventually, I walked out the door to have a casual lunch, always mindful of one of the guiding principals of audition day: thou shalt not drink too much water.

It's a guiding principal because the greatest stumbling block to an audition is the workings of your own body. These workings can be either mental or physical; both are equally effective at DISTRACTION, which is the killer. If you are distracted, then you are more likely to not have every single thing go as planned, and all it takes is a single thing to go awry to start the house of cards collapsing.

The biggest mistake some people make is to drink lots of water. Water helps alleviate stress ordinarily, especially because we tend to "forget" about drinking water when we're worrying about other things. But in an audition setting, where you must (at a particular time) do something, you can't afford to run to the bathroom while the committee is waiting for you to begin your fourth of five excerpts. It's the same reason they won't wait for me to relieve myself during Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, simply because I have dozens of minutes with only rest.

The audition process was a study in the contrast between front of house and back of house. We waited in chairs set up in the lobby. Fancy mirrors, glass chandeliers, Rococco architecture; all very fancy. As we were individually led to the warm-up rooms, we pass through the doors into the rear stage area.

The paint is peeling. Things of all shapes and sizes clutter the hallways. Old risers, cardboard sheets, metal racks, and so on. The warm-up rooms are dressing rooms, complete with twelve-foot mirrors and stray eyebrow pencils on top of shelves only I can see. By the way, DUSTY!

The bathroom is approximately five foot by six foot. It contains an old pullchain toilet adapted to a single flush lever, and a single with a single off-center nozzle with two taps. Everything feels old. When I was in England, we stayed in a converted nunnery. These accommodations were similar.

Strangely, only yesterday I was in the OTHER performance venue for the symphony: the concert hall of one of the local community colleges. I was performing with a brass band, and the facility is beautiful, back and front. Funny how things that are new and costly feel and appear nicer!

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