Category — auditions

Four new musicians will be joining the Oregon Symphony next season - here’s the rundown on each of them (courtesy of the Oregon Symphony’s Carl Herko):

Mark J. Dubac, second clarinet - Dubac has been principal clarinetist with the Green Bay Symphony in Wisconsin for the past two seasons and has performed with the Santa Fe Opera Orchestra, the Milwaukee Symphony, Milwaukee Ballet Orchestra and the New Mexico Symphony. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and a bachelor’s degree from The Juilliard School, where he studied with Ricardo Morales, principal clarinetist of the Philadelphia Orchestra.

Graham G. Kingsbury, assistant principal horn - Kingsbury, currently a member of the Marin Symphony in California, has performed with several San Francisco Bay Area ensembles, including the San Francisco Symphony, since 2005. He holds a master’s degree from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and a bachelor’s degree from Northwestern University in Illinois, both in horn performance.

Alicia DiDonato Paulsen, assistant principal flute - Paulsen has been a free-lance musician based in Boston since 2002, where she has performed with the Boston Symphony and Boston Pops orchestras as well as the orchestras of Opera Boston and the Boston Lyric Opera. She has earned a master’s degree from the New England Conservatory in Boston, a bachelor’s degree from The Hartt School in Connecticut and was awarded a fellowship with the New World Symphony. Paulsen will occupy the Martha Herby Flute Chair.

Alicia Michele Waite, fourth horn - Waite has been a member of the Virginia Symphony Orchestra since 2004 and has performed with the Milwaukee Symphony, New World Symphony and Civic Orchestra of Chicago, among others. She holds a master’s degree from Northwestern University and a bachelor’s degree from Lawrence University in Wisconsin, both in performance.

It will be a pleasure to get to know these new additions to the OSO “family” next season. You may have spotted Alicia a couple times this previous season, she was playing in the section for the performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony this May.

I’ve been reading the discussion boards over at MyAuditions.com with interest over the past year. There have been a few auditions (flute in Detroit and harp in Cleveland are the most recent controversial examples) that have either drawn many, many applicants but not hired someone, or else they have hired someone who was already in the orchestra - in some cases without advancing anyone from the preliminary rounds.

There are the usual aspersions cast regarding the fact that the audition may have been fixed, that it’s defrauding the applicants if the orchestra clearly intends only to hire from within and not from the cattle-call pool of unscreened applicants.

I doubt that’s ever the case. If it is, it’s exceedingly rare.

Why? [Read more →]

OSO Resident conductor Gregory Vajda
photo credit: Aaron Hewitt

David Stabler reports that Oregon Symphony Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda is a finalist for the Fairfax (VA) Symphony. Fairfax is a Northern Virginia suburb of Washington, D.C. I used to play in the Fairfax Symphony back in the day, *cough* years ago.

Bill Eddins, music director of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, wrote a post a few weeks back about the mixed experience that is being on an orchestral audition committee. He wrote about the process and frustrations of being on the principal trumpet audition committee in Edmonton.

He got a lot of feedback - some good, some bad, some very ugly. [Read more →]

Conductor and blogger extraordinaire William Eddins writes an excellent post about taking part in a music director search - as a prospective candidate - by the Charlotte Symphony.  [Read more →]

This past week there was an inquiry on the message boards at MyAuditions.com about the results of a recent viola audition for the St. Paul Chamber Orchestra. Apparently, there were two people who were finalists and who were going to be given trial periods before a hiring decision was made. The names of those two people were exposed on the boards. [Read more →]