All,
Thank you to everyone who submitted a recording to the West Point euphonium audition. The panel had some difficult decisions and long debates narrowing down the 50 submissions to the eight chosen semi-finalists. Congratulations to those who advanced, we look forward to seeing you at the live rounds in February.
To those who have not been contacted yet, please know that many of you were very close to advancing. We know it can be frustrating to send a tape and not get any feedback, so if you would like some very brief comments and an idea of how your tape and resume were perceived by the panel, feel free to send me an email to
keith.kile@usma.edu.
A couple of general notes about the recordings sent:
-The tapes that advanced were extremely good. Technical excerpts were clean and in time, lyrical excerpts were smooth and maturely phrased, and the quality of the recordings made them easy to listen to and easy to hear the great playing.
-The tapes that advanced were clearly well-prepared and well-thought-out, and showed an understanding of the repertoire and role of the part being performed.
-Solos were generally very well done and we enjoyed hearing your personalities come through. Thank you, all!
Pitfalls of tapes that did not advance:
-Festive Overture disqualified many tapes. Tapes that advanced had clean and even eighth notes, did not rush repeated notes, and established a clear tempo from the very beginning of the excerpt.
-Colonial Song gave candidates the chance to show smooth section playing and long ideas with few “impulses” or swelling of individual notes within a phrase. It also was the only opportunity in the excerpts to show ensemble solo playing at rehearsal 21.
-Candidates that advanced had very impressive recordings of Pineapple Poll and set a very high standard. Several candidates were pushed out of the advancing pile when this excerpt was compared back to back. Cleanliness on the opening is a given, but the tapes that stood out made it sound easy and didn’t have any notes that were ghosted or popping out. The second excerpt has some specific dynamic and phrase markings that were beautifully played on the best tapes.
-Stars and Stripes was surprisingly nearly every tape’s worst excerpt. We had several candidates we were excited to advance until we got to an unacceptable Stars and Stripes. The difficulty of this march comes from performing exciting and long phrases while paying very close attention to markings and rhythms all while maintaining a constant tempo. Anecdotally, we were just looking for a solid S&S, played in a great march style that sounds easy and perfect... simple, right??
A note on recording quality:
-We were pleased with most of the tape qualities. When submitting a tape keep in mind that the panel WANTS you to succeed, but a large part of that requires them to want to hear your recording. Tapes that constantly clip or peak, are so distant we can’t hear cleanliness, or that couldn’t accurately represent a good characteristic euphonium sound just couldn’t be advanced. There were too many really good tapes to spend lots of time inches from the monitor listening for cleanliness or sound quality.
Thank you again for all of the wonderful submissions, and again feel free to contact me at
keith.kile@usma.edu for light individual comments or questions about the process we used.
-Keith