Audition report

Remember back in college when everybody told you that you needed to major in something "marketable" so you could get a job once you were graduated, and all the fun degrees like English, letters, classics, music, art history, etc., were in the group of "unmarketable" degrees? Well, this is one of those days when the unmarketable degree would have been useful.

Had my audition at the Washington National Cathedral this afternoon. It turns out they were auditioning for substitutes for those occasions when one of the full-time singers was unable to perform, rather than for full-time singers. They held the auditions down in the Bethlehem Chapel, which is the oldest part of the cathedral in the undercroft, underneath the high altar, around an old Steinway piano. The choirmaster was in some kind of cathedral staff meeting, so he was nearly half an hour late starting. I sang "Thus saith the Lord," which is the first bass song in Messiah, and it went very well. Nice acoustic in that chapel. Actually, in terms of solo performance, I thought I was clearly the best singer of those I heard (didn't get to hear everybody). We also had to sight-read and sing two anthems. The first was fairly easy. It was an early music polyphonic piece, and the organist played the piano reduction of the four-part anthem, so it wasn't too terribly difficult to sing. The second piece, however, was a late 20th century English anthem that was fast, atonal, and had constantly changing time signatures. The organist played the accompaniment, but the four voices were not included in the accompaniment, so it was much more challenging to sing. I actually thought I did pretty good on the sight-reading for me (I'm not trained in this and I don't have perfect pitch), but it was pretty sloppy on the second anthem. As I mentioned before, sight-reading was my biggest concern about the auditions, since music majors have a couple of classes where they learn to do it. Anyway, after things were done, the choirmaster told me I had a "lovely voice," but the sight-reading skills weren't good enough (their only rehearsal for music is in a thirty minute warm-up prior to a service), and if I was able to improve my sight-reading, I was welcome to come back and audition again next year. I think that was his diplomatic way of saying "You suck. We aren't hiring you. Go away."

So, I'm ready for my martini now.