One Moment | The End of Audition Season!!!!

If you’ve been reading my blog for awhile, you know my older son Liam is pursuing his passion as a trombone player. As a high school junior, he’s had a LOT of auditions this Fall, and yesterday he had the LAST ONE for this year!!! Hooray! It has taken the efforts of all of us in the family, plus some awesomeness from his accompanist Stephanie Lovell, to make all these happen, amongst school, rehearsals, and performances! We keep a master calendar and once a month or so his Dad sits down with him and goes over the requirements for each audition as a reminder of what music he needs to be working on, I thought I’d share it with you:

On top of the 3 levels of state honor groups and the year long youth orchestra audition, this year saw the addition of 3 different All National groups, and 2 International solo competitions. The results from all these auditions (that we know, there are 3 outstanding) has been quite awesome! Being a finalist in the Army Band ETW Solo Competition is quite a feather in his cap – the other 2 finalists are a High School Senior and College Freshman!! When he performs in the finals next March in Washington DC, it’s a concert that lots of trombone professors from music schools should be at, he’ll start being on the radar of those we haven’t reached out to already.

I am obviously quite proud of him, and excited for all these great opportunties he’s going to have in the Spring. I also know that after the brief respite from auditions, we then have to start getting him to all the rehearsals and concerts for these events! Plus he has to learn the music for the performances, keep the solo competition repertoire in tip top shape and, oh yeah, starting working on new pieces because this time next year he’ll be ready to audition for college/conservatory!!!!! (Next year, we’re going to have to add auditions to several Schools of Music into that mess up above, for most of them they are Jan – March. Because of this, it’s possible a couple of those groups will have to be eliminated just because of scheduling)

Of course, all work and no play makes anyone a “dull boy”. “Trombone Christmas” was yesterday as well – local trombonists gather for an evening of sight-reading Christmas carols outside for an audience of family and friends.

Here’s Liam and his Dad, yup, it’s offical, Liam is taller! 🙂

I managed to record these 4 guys (From Left to Right: Stu Undem, Liam Glendening, Steve Stockman, Andrew Glendening) playing a jazzy “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen”: (the Mom in me has to tell you that Liam and his Dad usually sound a bit better than this!!!)

As it got darker, they traded off playing songs, first this group:

And then this one!

It was lots of fun, while it lasted. Liam had a CYMO rehearsal, so had to leave before it was over…oh, the life of a musician, juggling a zillion different gigs! 🙂 He loves it, which is all parent can ask for!