Michigan State University DMA Audition

Last week I traveled to Michigan to visit my family and audition at Michigan State University. I arrived on Sunday night and the audition was on Monday morning. The university was about 2 hour drive from my grandfather's home (Coloma, MI). Due to an accident on I-69, and bad directions from Googlemaps I arrived to the College of Music 15 minutes late. The 5 professors from the woodwind faculty were waiting, so I didn't get a chance to warm-up. It also just so happened to be the first day school, so it was quite busy.

I was lucky to have my audition in the College of Music auditorium (seats about 700). The acoustics were quite nice, which helped my reeds sound better. For the audition I had prepared five works, but only ended up playing excerpts from three. I started with the Tomasi Concerto for Saxophone first movement. It went well, but I felt my fingers were a bit sluggish in parts. Some of the technique did not come out as clearly as I wanted, but the cadenza went well. Following Tomasi, Dr. Lulloff asked me to play Klonos (Piet Swerts). By this time, I was getting warmed up, which was good because Klonos is quite a technical monster. It went better than Tomasi and I was relieved when he asked me to finish with Mai (Ryo Noda). I felt the most comfortable with this work. It went quite well, including the quarter tones which I was worried about.

Following Mai, Dr. Lulloff asked me to step out as they would discuss my audition. About 15 minutes later he came out and informed me that I had played well. For the next hour he led me around the Music School, introducing me to his students, faculty and administration. I spent the rest of the day with my grandfather touring E. Lansing and the MSU campus. I hope I get a chance to spend some more time here!