Well, Liam and I had quite the time in Bloomington Indiana, for his audition at the Jacobs School of Music, which is part of Indiana University. Here we are in the airport:
We arrived in Indianapolis just before midnight THursday night and then drove down to Bloomington Friday morning. We took a tour of the School of Music, which is made up of 5 really big buildingss on the southeast corner of the huge IU campus. This combination of a round (practice rooms) and square building (classrooms and offices) put together is called “the toilet” by students (according to hubby, who got his D.Mus. here years ago)
The large performance hall has a huge Calder scuplture outside:
Last year, Liam and Andrew visited Jacobs when Liam was playing the ASTA All National Orchestra in Louisville, he was able to take lessons with 2 of the 3 full time trombone professorts then. Friday afternoon he had a lesson with Pete Ellefson, the third trombone prof. I sat in and took notes:
After a lovely dinner and a quick look around this cool used book store:
There was an “audition eve recital” where the trombone professors played a few pieces, and then lots of the current trombone students and every auditioning trombonist (55 or so in all) played a trombone choir piece together. No picture of that. 🙁
Saturday we woke up gright and early, got a good breakfast, went to an information session about the school, Liam got a good practice session in and then after a quick lunch, audition time! It was over quickly, and he was happy with how he played!
We then wandered a bit around the campus, including their awesome art museum. Liam was happy to see they had a Pollack:
and a Picasso!
Liam spent another hour and a half in the used book store while I kicked back in the hotel room, and then it was time for a celebratory dinner!
We were up early the next morning and headed back to the airport. We arrived home late afternoon and I officially was POOPED! I sat my butt down on the chaise and did NOT get up! 🙂
We had a great time…there was certainly a fair amount of stress on my part, directions are NOT my strong suit, so we got turned around a fair amount. Liam’s got some good stress-relief strategies going on that seem to be serving him well so far. The next audtion at Northwestern is much more stressful, hopefully this relatively low-stress experience has got him ready!
4 Responses
Candy I signed up to your blog because of a love of dying and crafting but now I am hooked on following you and your family! Love the photo of you and Liam together. Wishing him the best of luck with his auditions.
Annie from cold, wet England.
Oh Annie, what a lovely thing to say! I’m so glad you’re enjoying the personal side that I’m sharing…it’s something that I like to do, I really enjoy reading tales from days past, I think I’d forget some of these moments if I weren’t blogging them! Indeed, these next couple of months are going to be very exciting!!!!
Thanks so much for letting me know, and for following along!
Candy, I have spent entirely too much time tonight reading your website (it’s now after 2 a.m.). My son is a trombonist who will audition at Indiana in March, so I was just googling a bit to see what kinds of experiences people have had there. I was fascinated to read about Liam’s IU audition, his Blair adventure, and all of his accomplishments as a musician. Sounds like he’s a phenomenal young man with a very bright future. I wish him the best at his auditions…and smooth travels.
Also, I saw your scarves. I am swooning over the colors.
Thanks for an enjoyable read!
Chris
I’m sorry I kept you up so late, Chris! 😉 But, as a mother of a trombonist, I KNOW you can relate to what we’re going through!
I’ve got to say that IU, specifically the trombone studio, does a GREAT job of making the audition weekend very relaxing and enjoyable! Do NOT miss the “audition eve” recital, make sure your son brings his trombone so he can play with everybody at the end. It was an awesome experience.
The trombone profs really want to get to know the auditionees, your son will talk almost as much as he will play during the 10 minute audition. They also want each one to play their best, so have him choose a few selections that show his breadth as a player that he can play in 6 minutes.
Between the audition eve recital and in the “green room” before the audition, there was plenty of time to meet other students, both the auditionees as well as current studio members. Liam new many of them in both categories, and the new ones he met were VERY friendly!
There are lots of great restaurants in the town, I HIGHLY recommend the Runcible Spoon for breakfast, get there early because the fill up. (Note: early is 8AM, we’d heard about the get there early part but I neglected to look up what time they actually open, so we had to wait for 10 minutes for them to open!) Uptown Café was FABULOUS for dinner, we also went to Grazie, which was also quite nice.
Let me know if you or your son have any more questions! And I hope he has a fabulous audition!