Quick Audition Story

Sometime in the 90s I saw an advertisement from Disney looking for musicians and other performers. My mind raced to create all sorts of magical situations and wonderful fantasies – if I could just win it.

So I sent in my application. A month later I received my confirmation – auditions for everyone in upstate New York were at Syracuse University.

I kept reading…Everyone gets a 2 minute slot – 2 minutes…. TWO MINUTES!!!

1 minute for a prepared piece and 1 minute for sight reading. I was auditioning on electric bass and had prepaared a nice arrangement of Stolen Moments for my prepared piece. That went fine.

Now onto sight reading. He handed me piece gave me the 15 – 20 seconds to look it over. OK, this is doable I thought.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yep.” I took a deep breath and prepared to play.

“OK, here’s your tempo.” Wait.. What? I was ready to just go ahead and play and he gives me a tempo so fast my head began to spin. I squeezed in a few measures…

“Thank you.”

That was it! There were no second chances. I messed up and was dismissed.

lol…..