Well, it’s been quiet here at the blog for some time, so I thought it might be a good thing to tell you what I’ve been up to.\u00a0 I went down to Los Angeles this past Sunday to take the audition for the 3rd chair viola position (Assistant principal) of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on Monday.\u00a0 I didn’t win.\u00a0 Not even close.\u00a0 But I played well, and I was in plenty of good company, for this is a plum spot in arguably the best financially positioned orchestra in the world, with a great, iconic performing space, and the hottest young conductor in the world in his first year as music director.<\/p>\n
Last week, someone on Twitter tweeted a line from the television program 30 Rock: “An audition is a grotesque carnival of human misery”.\u00a0 Truer words have never been spoken.\u00a0 No matter what you do as a performer – playing an instrument, singing, acting, even presenting a visual arts portfolio – being called out onto the stage to play little snippets of music as technically perfect, yet ineffably musical as possible while under the most intense pressures – including money, vanity, reputation, personal neuroses, disappointing your favorite teacher – is one of the most excruciating and unrewarding activities that humans voluntarily deign to undergo.\u00a0 A couple years ago I auditioned for a similar position with the Seattle Symphony, which you can read here<\/a>, here<\/a>, here<\/a> and here<\/a>.\u00a0 I’ll give no similar blow-by-blow this time, I just don’t have it in me.\u00a0 But I’ve emerged from another fruitless, grotesque carnival with my playing raised to a new level, and with a recital program beginning to form in my mind that I’m very excited to start working towards.\u00a0 Besides, I love my orchestra, the Oregon Symphony, my first and only real job as a musician, and I have many wonderful colleagues and friends that it would have pained me greatly to leave, so life goes on, and I am content.<\/p>\n Here are a few snapshots that I took during the afternoon after my role in the audition came to an abrupt end:<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Well, it’s been quiet here at the blog for some time, so I thought it might be a good thing to tell you what I’ve been up to.\u00a0 I went down to Los Angeles this past Sunday to take the audition for the 3rd chair viola position (Assistant principal) of the Los Angeles Philharmonic on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":303,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[238,2,22],"tags":[313,3660],"class_list":["post-3332","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-auditions","category-the-orchestra-world","category-viola","tag-los-angeles-philharmonic","tag-viola"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pa8kC-RK","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":651,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/09\/new-principal-viola-for-la\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":0},"title":"new principal viola for LA","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 9, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Carrie Dennis, currently one of the principal violists of the Berlin Philharmonic (you might have seen her on the front desk for Monday's broadcast of the BPO's Mahler 9 with Simon Rattle), has been hired as the new principal viola of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Here's the LAPhil's press release:\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"laphil.jpg","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2008\/01\/laphil.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":657,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2008\/01\/11\/carrie-dennis-plays-paganini-and-schumann\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":1},"title":"carrie dennis plays paganini and schumann","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 11, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Carrie Dennis, the phenomenal violist who has (by the anything but grizzled age of 30!) already been Assistant principal violist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, Principal violist of the Berlin Philharmonic, and was just named as Principal violist of the Los Angeles Philharmonic has a couple videos up on youtube. See\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "music"","block_context":{"text":"music","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/05iUOXkzvM8\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5722,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2011\/01\/12\/local-violist-makes-good\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":2},"title":"local violist makes good","author":"Charles Noble","date":"January 12, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"David Lau, who was a member of the Portland Youth Philharmonic and a winner of the Young Artists Concert competition, has won an audition to the august ensemble, the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. \u00a0You may have heard of one of their earlier music directors: Felix Mendelssohn. \u00a0David studied at the Interlochen\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "auditions"","block_context":{"text":"auditions","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/auditions\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/3182_82771447306_674297306_2213088_7699737_n-400x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5380,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/10\/01\/new-musicians-join-symphony\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":3},"title":"new musicians join symphony","author":"Charles Noble","date":"October 1, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"We had a spate of auditions at the end of last season, and the results netted us three new musicians who are all now settled in Portland and playing with the orchestra.\u00a0 They are Principal timpanist Jonathan Greeney, oboist and English hornist Kyle Mustain, and violist Silu Fei.\u00a0 Here's a\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "auditions"","block_context":{"text":"auditions","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/auditions\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/10\/jonathangreeney.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":4728,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2010\/06\/02\/berlin-philharmonic-auditions\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":4},"title":"berlin philharmonic auditions","author":"Charles Noble","date":"June 2, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"I just stumbled on to an online virtual panel discussion at Polyphonic.org from several years ago centered on the subject of orchestral auditions.\u00a0 One of the panelists, Fergus McWilliam is a member of the horn section of the Berlin Philharmonic - I thought his thoughts on the nature of how\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "auditions"","block_context":{"text":"auditions","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/auditions\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2010\/06\/4582625127_d45b92a536_b-400x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":396,"url":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/2007\/07\/24\/not-much-going-on\/","url_meta":{"origin":3332,"position":5},"title":"not much going on","author":"Charles Noble","date":"July 24, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"It's been a pretty low-key couple of days.\u00c2\u00a0 I'm anticipating a burst of posts on some Portland classical music scene issues shortly.\u00c2\u00a0 For now, here's what's playing on my iPod today: Bart\u00c3\u00b2k - Concerto for Orchestra: Los Angeles Philharmonic, Gustvo Dudamel, cond. DG Concerts (iTunes store exclusive download) Barber -\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "the orchestra world"","block_context":{"text":"the orchestra world","link":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/category\/music\/the-orchestra-world\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/303"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3332"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3332\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3332"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3332"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nobleviola.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3332"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}