The Audition
“Make a joyful noise to the LORD, all the earth!
Serve the LORD with gladness!
Come into his presence with singing!”
(Ps 100:1-2)
The Audition
By Stephen W. Hiemstra
At the end of my second summer working as an aquatics instructor at Goshen Scout Camps, I pooled my summer savings with other savings and bought a new trombone, a Conn 88h. The Conn 88h was considered a base trombone, unlike the Silver Bach Stradivarius—a tenor trombone—that I had played since the fifth grade. The Conn 88h was visibly different in having both a Remington mouthpiece and a trigger for outer register notes, but most people cited the deeper, more mellow sound as the most important distinction.
Distinctive or not, my new trombone helped me win first chair in an audition to the Prince George’s County Youth Orchestra, a much coveted position, and I moved up to practicing an hour a day. As I entered my senior year, I had already been playing first chair in the Parkdale Senior High School Symphonic Band and the school orchestra going on two years; I also enrolled in a music composition class. At Riverdale Presbyterian Church, I was also singing in the Youth Choir and taking voice lessons from choir director. Privately, I studied trombone with David Bragunier, who at that time was the tuba player in the National Symphony Orchestra.
Although I had played trombone since the fifth grade and was involved in numerous musical groups, it was not until my senior year of high school that I started to think of making music a career. Senior year created the atmosphere for making such decisions because college applications needed to be written which, of course, involved a bit of stock-taking. In taking stock, I realized that music had become my primary social activity and I enjoyed modest success as a player between taking first chair in every group that I played with and competing in solo competitions at the county and state festivals. Consequently, in the fall of 1971 as a senior in high school, I announced my intention to audition for entrance into the Indiana University School of Music in Bloomington, Indiana.
I am not sure that I understood at that point the seriousness of my decision to audition for music school, either in terms of the talent and commitment required. After all, most of my friends had no idea of what they would study in college and college seemed such a long ways off at that point. Picking a course of study in high school seemed to allow plenty of time to prepare and seemed much like picking out a new suit to see what looks good and what fits. But studying music was not like picking out a new suit, I learned, because my audition was only a matter of a couple months off and I was woefully unprepared, as my teacher worked hard to convince me.
The heart of my teacher’s concerns about my preparation originated with the simple problem that trombone playing was primarily a social activity for me, not a professional aspiration. Professional musicians practice many hours of day to reach a level of perfection seldom attained by amateurs. For me, moving from half an hour of practice to an hour a day of practice daily was a big move, but it was not indicative of a professional commitment.
By yearend 1971, I moved from an hour of practice daily to closer to two hours a day and my teacher had arranged for me to study with a colleague of his, a trombonist with the National Symphony Orchestra. My new teacher began by adjusting my embouchure to account for my over-bite and to move to playing with a wider range in the upper register. This new embouchure required new muscles in my mouth to be used and the old muscles to be used differently, which initially reduced my performance range. Of course, I was excited about my new teacher and all these changes, but I was also a bit overwhelmed—I was practicing more, getting prepared for my audition, and overwhelmed by the whole prospect of visiting Indiana University in February.
Overwhelmed was also my Dad who did not know what to make of my new interest in music, even though he supported my efforts both to prepare for my audition and travel to Indiana. Music was a great hobby, he said, but my modest talent did not seem adequate to support a viable career in his view; still, he was prepared to accept the judgment of the music department auditioning me. Consequently, he asked that I give the audition my best shot, but accept the outcome of the audition—if I passed, then I could study music, but, if I failed, he asked that I focus my studies elsewhere. My Dad’s advice about the audition seemed sound enough and I promised to accept it.
When the time came to audition, I traveled to Bloomington, Indiana on a Friday alone and stayed the night in one of the dormitory. A music student that I met the previous summer at a church retreat lived in that dorm and she met me for dinner in the cafeteria and introduced me to a few people. Tired from the trip, I took a shower and went to bed early.
On Saturday morning, I walked over to the music building arriving early to warm up. The building was full of practice rooms and prospective students were directed to an empty room to warm up. After warming up, I found myself waiting for what seemed like an eternity with students coming and going everywhere—horns blowing, stings playing, flutes piping—auditions ran late. When my turn to play arrived, I was all jazzed up, overstimulated, so anxious beyond words that I was unable to play even a Bb scale. I gave the judges no excuse to pass me; the audition was a nonstarter, dismal failure.
In the fall of 1972 I began attending Indiana University without a clear major. My failed audition so shamed me that I was unable to continue playing trombone or to enjoy listening to classical musical until after I got married and moved to Centreville, Virginia, more than a decade later. With the formation of a new church plant in Centreville in 1987, I joined the church choir and, with a new job and our first child on the way, in 1989 I bought a studio upright, Young Chang piano and learned to play hymns.
