I had meant to post a little more about my coaching sessions, and I had meant to bring my stylus with me so I could do a reflection before I did my audition, but life happened and none of that happened. I can say I learned an incredible amount in four little coaching sessions. I was a scattered mess from the bass clarinet audition a month ago – literally played so poorly and was so befuddled by what just happened that I didn’t even have the energy to walk down to the 7-Eleven and get a cheap bottle of wine. Then to turn around and do the clarinet list in four weeks. I literally didn’t think I ..read more

I thought I should post a little update on some of the mental things I’m doing a little bit differently this audition than I’ve done in the past. I only have four weeks, well not even at this point! I have 2 1/2 weeks! Oh no! My first project was to practice slowly with the subdivision. I started at half tempo and pretty quickly found out that it was too slow when you have to slam together your best work as fast as possible. Basically I had an okay lesson that week, but it seemed like I still didn’t “know” how all the excerpts went. Which leads me pretty quickly to my first mental coaching se ..read more

I am trying to figure out what I need to do mentally to have a good performance in the audition room. My audition on Monday was so disappointing – after all that preparation, and playing for plenty of people who made me nervous, I walked into the audition room and my mind just went, “I can’t do this.” So I’ve done a little bit of soul searching. It’s not that I wasn’t prepared – sure I’m tweaking my preparation, but I have to work on the mental game. The hard part about that is sometimes facing the parts of you that you don’t really want to, in order to figure out what is at the core of your p ..read more

I’m still trying to process the results of the last audition tape I submitted. I’m really proud – I was contacted that my tape was one of the few that the panel unanimously agreed deserved an invitation to the live round, but because I’m military, if I were to win I couldn’t be hired. So the win comes with baggage. The first reaction is yay, I’m not on crack or totally delusional. I thought my tape was good; they thought my tape was good. This means I don’t suck. On the other hand, I have more tapes coming up. Yay opportunities. Opportunities to be awesome, and opportunities to suck. One of t ..read more

I was asked the other day how I was going to move forward after what was a gut-wrenching rejection from the Navy Band for a live audition. I said I was compartmentalizing my feelings – put the rejection out of my mind and focus on what was coming next. The person I was speaking with challenged me to own the emotions, and this almost-abandoned blog came up. So here we are. It’s been a challenging month. I have been working on various audition excerpts for the better part of the summer in the hopes that I would be ready if and when auditions opened up. I am finally within a year of my contract ..read more

I don’t mean literally waking up as in the morning when you drag your slow ass out of bed, stumble your way to the coffee machine and thank the maker every time you turn on the electric kettle that at least the temperature of the water is one thing you DON’T have to think about on your daily journey to functionality. Or in my case, you have your husband do all the aforementioned while you get “just five more minutes” at least another 3-5 times before you realize you actually have to get out of bed or else you’re not going to make it to work on time. Maybe this is a little bit like that. It cer ..read more

On Wednesday, I finished a 100 day practice challenge, inspired by my good friend Greg Dudzienski at The Ear of the Mind (cool name, huh?) It happened to coincide with a much-needed 4-day weekend where my husband and I flew back to Hawaii where we were last stationed and where we apparently left large parts of our hearts. So much so that we gave our son Beckett the middle name Makana, which means “gift” in Hawaiian. Why was I inspired to do this challenge? Pretty basic – I just had a baby and needed some inspiration to get back into practicing. That’s all. I had no specific goal in mind, excep ..read more

My last post really only touched on what was the beginning of a long recovery process. I dunno, I should be the first person to point out how silly I was to think that I would go back to work after a baby basically fit for full duty. I actually remember thinking, after being unbelievably frustrated at how ugly most maternity clothes are, and how even the cute ones don’t look good on anyone who is 9 months pregnant, that I couldn’t wait to have the baby and be able to wear my normal clothes again. Silly me. TMI disclaimer: if you don’t want to know about women’s recovery garbage, stop here! So ..read more