By: Aarav G. '31 & Meredith Y. '30
Music binds us all; even the deaf can feel its magical rhythms. At Berkeley, we take pride in our music program - so much so that we cultivate an environment where every student is encouraged to explore new instruments, step out of their comfort zone, and nurture their musical ability! Students in choir, orchestra, and band have the opportunity to join an elite group of fellow musicians in All-State Honors groups.
The choir audition process is intense. “I, as the orchestra director, believe the choir auditions are harder than ours,” Mr. Dillard admitted. Students must complete a musicianship and sight reading test to prove that they understand the theory behind the music. Mrs. DeCosimo explained, “they want to make sure they have a high caliber of musicians in the process, and so they’re going to elevate it to make sure they’re getting the best singers.” Once a student has successfully completed these tests, they are finally tested on their singing ability. Those who make it to this point must purchase the sheet music for the six songs that will be performed at the All-State convention and learn them. Students will be auditioned on excerpts from three of these songs but will only be told what one of the excerpts are before the afternoon that the auditions are held. The auditions will be recorded and sent to adjudicators to be judged blindly. A single student auditioned from MD choir, Meredith Young, and she made it in. She will be singing as an alto in the treble choir.
Band auditions are incredibly competitive. Mr. Dillard told the Bugle “there are hundreds of kids auditioning for one or two spots.” To earn one of these coveted spots, students learn a technical, a lyrical piece, and then finally scales. The technical piece is made of multiple complicated rhythms and varying pitches. The lyrical piece is a medium tempo, and this is meant to show that you can sound blended, and that you have breath control, phrasing, and tone. To summarize, all of this is to show that you don’t sound like a dying leaf blower. After that, you will play your scales. Scales are meant to help with melody building, improvisation, understanding notes, practice technique, sight-reading, and setting the mood. You play one chromatic scale (every note), and seven other scales ranging from A-G. These scales have to be played by memory. Sadly, nobody this year in MD managed to get into All-State Band.
Similar to band, orchestra auditions have hundreds of students auditioning for limited spots. Each ensemble only has twelve spots per instrument. The students must learn two pieces, one technical and one musical, which they have access to the May before their audition so that they may have all summer to prepare. At the audition, students have forty-five minutes to practice before they’re recorded playing seven scales (A-G) and excerpts from each song, which they do not know ahead of the audition. Once they’ve shown their performance skills, “they have to sight-read. They are given an excerpt of music that is roughly 15 measures. They are given 20 seconds to look it over, then they must perform it,” Mr. Dillard told the Bugle. This year, we had two students make it into the All-State orchestra, Angie Chen and Athena Tsai.
Though All-State is a rigorous audition process, there is no feeling like that of knowing you’re among the best. Congratulations to all those who made it in!