A Flurry Of Auditions

Well! Auditions for this year's festivals are over for me (no more Hornpipe and Sweet Georgia Brown - thank goodness because I'm sick of them both), and the results are in!

DISTRICT HONORS:

Tuesday was my audition for district honors concert band. I've been in honors band for the past four years (that's every year since sixth grade...) and I always have a lot of fun and get a good chair. I thought my audition for this went so so much better than last year's so I was feeling good about it. And out of the thirty-five people in the district who auditioned on trumpet.....I was fourth best! Fourth chair = first part which is better than I was hoping for. I figured I would be playing second trumpet given the competition and because I knew I could have played the piece better, so I'm really happy about my placement!

JAZZ ALL-STATE

Last Friday (As I told you in a post) I auditioned for jazz all-state. The competition for this is HUGE as trumpet is a very very popular instrument, and besides, it's within the whole state, not just the district. As a sophomore, I know I'm a very good player, but because they only take eleven trumpets I knew my odds were not necessarily in my favor. However, I had been working on this piece since March, went into the audition feeling prepared, and ended up having a very very solid audition. Yay me. Anyway, I felt that even if I didn't get in, I really did do my best, and I would be OK with that. 

While waiting for results, I did a little research on what the composition of the three jazz all-state bands are. There's a combo which is basically a lot of improv, a regular jazz band, and an honors jazz band. The best improvisier and soloist goes to the combo, and the other top ten trumpets go into the other two bands - the first five to honors and the second to regular. I figured that if I made it, I would be in regular jazz band but.......

I GOT THE FIFTH HIGHEST TRUMPET SCORE IN THE STATE!

Which means I'm in the honors jazz band, and also just about the fifth best high school jazz trumpet player in the state.

I am so happy.

Off To All-State

Hey everyone! I'm typing this while sitting on a bus to Augusta with ten other band geeks for jazz all-state auditions. I'm really excited, I've been preparing for this audition since March and I just want to go in, have fun with the audition and hopefully get in. 

For the audition we have to play two major scales, a chromatic scale from low F sharp to high C, sightreading, and then the tune Sweet Georgia Brown, the etude to the same chord changes, and improv, so it's a pretty intense audition. This is the etude:

It's really fun actually. Very swing, very playable. It almost just plays itself which is pretty cool. Anyway I'm excited - Wish me luck! :)

PS- Jenny says "hi blog!"

*UPDATE* I'm on the way back from my audition - and it went really really well. I'm a very happy girl right now. Can't wait for results on Monday :)