District+7

Summarize your District's processes.

District 7 has always had a very involved set of by-laws and guidelines for auditions to get into the District level Festivals for Chorus, Orchestra, Bands, (both Upper and Lower), Jazz Ensemble and Vocal Jazz Ensemble (new just this year). The procedures have been honed over the years to make them as fair and equitable as possible. The Band, Orchestra and Jazz auditions have been consistantly fair in that the same judges have been hearing all the students in a certain instrumental section for all the various aspects of the audition - solo playing, scales, sight-reading, etc. All of our judging has been blind with out any direct communication between those judging and the students auditioning. All the groups now use computer tabulations and print outs. All directors sending students to the audition must attend, judge and remain for the final results - this is an expectation without excuse.

Registration for the auditions has been moved to an online procedure for all groups now as well. This system still depends on the caring and professionalism of the membership as to deadlines and accuracy. Our District Chorus has a provision for Equal Representation - in that any school that didn't get a student in by direct audition can send its highest ranked student to the festival and be represented in the group. We felt it imperative that all schools be represented and all directors be present for the meetings where most of the decisions were being made as to procedures and policies. District Bands and Orchestra can allow equal representation for students deemed musically worthy by a committee consisting of the President, the Festival Host and the Audition Chair. This does not allow for each school to represented or each director to be present for the Festival meetings.

The Choral Auditions are held on the last Saturday of October and usually attended by 750 to 900 students from the 8 counties that make up District 7. Due to the numbers of students we have had two rounds of judging (Preliminary and Final) to pare down the number of students being heard by the Finals judges. The students prepare 4 peices for the auditions - not knowing which pieces will be used for Prelims or Finals. The students will sing the Preliminary audition at one of perhaps as many as 4 or 5 rooms that have 2 or 3 judges in them and be scored on two of the four pieces. After each student has sung the prelliminary audition, they are given cards if they have met the previously set norm score to move to Finals. The procedure for making sure that there are enough singers going to the Finals auditions in each section is set by the guidelines strictly. Each singer who has been given their card then moves to the Finals room where there is only one set of 6-8 judges to hear the students sing the other two pieces they have prepared. It is here that the students are ranked in order of ability and preparation and the first 25 in each section are accepted into the Chorus. After many years of this sometimes inequitable Preliminary audition process, we are going to try doing the same kind of judging procedure for our Chorus this coming year that the instrumental groups have used.

The Band and Orchestra auditions are held together on the first Saturday of December and involved students auditioning on prepared solos that change on a rotation basis from year to year. At this audition we fill an Orchestra and two Bands in a sometimes labor intensive and very careful procedure. Each student is heard by the same judges in each aspect of the audition - solo playing, scales, sight-reading, etc. All the persons auditioning in a section are judged against each other and so a student knows how they scored versus all the other players in that section. The tabulators then figure out by school who is in the Upper Area Band and the Lower Area Band and then who will represent the winds/percussion in the Orchestra.

The Jazz auditions - and newly established vocal jazz - are held on a Friday evening in January and are run the same way as the December instrumental auditions. The only audition by recording at this point is the Harp audition which is judged locally and then sent to the state for All-State consideration and ranking.

We are constatnly finding little changes necessary to take care of problems that have arisen - no system is perfect. Our directors have committed themselves to making sure that every student who wishes to audition has the chance to do so if they meet the age or grade level requirment. Our very specific volume of pages on the procedures for auditions can be found at our District 7 webpage.

Thanks, Eric Dundore District 7 President