She dreamed a silly dream that she had finally worked hard enough to walk into a community theatre audition without anyone laughing at her behind her back. I boiled, thinking of some poor kid who worked for four hours at minimum wage to afford a $24.99 pristine copy of the Legally Blonde piano book. Once, while I was waiting in line for an audition, the pianist came out in the hallway for a break and I overheard him snarking to a stage manager about these idiots who keep bringing in books for him to play from - just books! No folders, no clear sheet covers! The Mater’s private vocal coach can pencil them in. Do you know what percentage of people in your city doesn’t even own a printer? What do you expect them to do? Pull a piece from their library of Broadway musical piano-vocal selections? Drive the spare car over to the local Kinko’s to pay for copies? Once they’ve done that, perhaps they can familiarize themselves with the music by practicing with the Steinway in the antechamber. You opine about the importance of diversity casting, casting outside the normal pool, casting people without privilege. This is the wrong way to run an audition.įirst of all, the whole process is obviously gatekeeping, right?
With variations on the particular type of accompanist problem - starting in the wrong place, forgetting the key signature, slogging through in slow motion, and so on - this is around the tenth time this has happened to me. I stumble out of the audition, an audition which represented several hours of prep, in under a minute, in shock and demoralized. I am unable to spit out the lyrics fast enough, let along sing them, and I lose my place and my words. He indeed plays it “as fast as he can,” with the result that my audition, which I rehearsed to take about 45 seconds, takes less than half that time.
If I tell him the real tempo, he’ll probably play it too slowly. In my experience, most audition pianists err on the very slow side when it’s a song they have never seen before. I’ve given the wrong answer to this question before. Found the music, transposed it to my key, purchased it, printed it, highlighted the stop and start points and all key changes, numbered the measures, put the paper in clear plastic sleeves in a three-ring binder, the last page taped on in such a way that there won’t be a page turn (with an alternate printed version that does include a page turn in case the music stand will only hold two pages at a time).Īll that, then I get into the room and hand the music off to the charming accompanist, and he opens it and says with a big friendly smile, “Oh, I haven’t heard this one! What tempo would you like?”Ĭrap. It must consist of a perfect 32-bar cut that contains a verse and a chorus and shows range and builds to a satisfying conclusion, written for a character I could actually play.ĭone. The song must not be too easy to sing, but not so challenging that I can’t sing it with confidence. I’ve already gone through the usual song-picking nonsense: Comedic piece, similar in style to the show in question, clean content, not overdone, but known enough that it will likely be familiar to the accompanist and I can find sheet music for it - music which must be simple enough for said accompanist to sight read. (Editor’s note: I adjusted the title to make it clear that this article was directed towards community theatre settings, since that wasn’t as clear when the article was originally published)
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