Auditioning is a Rotten Pastime

I have taken many auditions over the last decade. I have flown, driven, and taken the train to them, and I (like all bass players) have had my share of inconveniences. There is one audition in particular that stands out, however.

I auditioned for principal bass of the San Jose Symphony in January of 2000. This orchestra went bankrupt a few months after I auditioned for it–now an orchestra in San Jose exists called Symphony Silicon Valley. Don’t try to go to www.sanjosesymphony.com–some nefarious people have taken it over and are using it (which is actually kind of funny, I think).

Principal bass of the San Jose Symphony was not a good job. The job was being advertised as paying $25,000, which doesn’t take anybody very far anywhere in the country, let alone in Silicon Valley. Still, I was graduating and desperate, so I got a ticket to fly out there. The flight was actually one of the smoother bass flight experiences for me, and I got to San Jose without incident. I had picked a hotel that had very reasonable rates. The reason for these cheap rates, I soon realized, was the scary nastiness of the neighborhood. I figured that there wouldn’t be a ghetto in Silicon Valley, but I managed to find it. Still, the hall was only two miles away, and a morning cab ride would take me all of 10 minutes. I called a cab service the night before and arranged for an 8 a.m. pick-up, which would give me plenty of time to make it to my 10 a.m. audition.

The next morning I am outside my hotel room in the ghetto waiting with my bass, and there is, of course, no cab in sight. This is something that I ran into over and over and over and over and over while auditioning. I would always arrange a wheelchair-accessible van cab (the only kind that fits basses now that nobody uses station wagon cabs), for a certain time, and it would maybe show up 10-15% of the time. About 20% of the time a regular cab would show up, and about 10% of the time a regular van cab (with a plexiglass partition) would show up. Over half of the time no cab would show up. This was one of those times.

I called the cab service and was told that there were NO van cabs at all available that morning, even though I had arranged for this the night before. I let them know what I thought of them and called a couple of other cab services with no luck. It was now about 9 a.m. and I decided to head out on foot. I could cover two miles in less than an hour easily even when carrying a bass.

Living in Chicago, I would often forget that other areas of the country are not freezing cold in January. I packed for the trip like a Chicagoan, with turtlenecks, sweaters, and corduroy pants. It was 80 degrees fahrenheit and sunny, however, and I was stuck in a black long-sleeved turtleneck and black corduroy pants and walking a bass two miles through the ghetto in summer weather.

I got to the hall about 15 minutes before my audition time drenched in sweat. There were only about 20 people at the audition. Most of them were from California, but there were a couple of guys from New York and Boston as well. I ended up getting assigned fourth for the 10 a.m. group, which meant that I was playing around 10:30 a.m. I played a few minutes in the scrub room (the room where everybody unpacks their basses) while I was waiting to go into the “on-deck” room (the room you go to where you see the excerpts you are about to play).

The “on-deck” room for this audition was a dressing room. When I went it I discovered to my horror that some candidate before me had vomited all over the floor. This was a very small room, and the smell was overwhelming. There is nothing like waiting to audition after hiking your bass a couple of miles while smelling someone else’s vomit to get you in the mood to audition.

I get called into the audition room, which looked like the boiler room of the building. The San Jose Symphony couldn’t even get a rehearsal room to for their bass candidates. The screen (which separated the committee from the candidate) was a chalkboard and a couple of sound bafflers with some drapes covering the holes, and the air conditioner was running in the room (RATTLE! RATTLE!). I played badly and got out of there after about three excerpts.

They only advanced one person to the semi-final rounds, and they proceeded to not give her the job. Then, a couple of months later, they went bankrupt and ceased to exist.

“Nobody’s good enough! Ha ha ha ha…uuuugh….bankrupt….”

What a good expenditure of time, effort, and money that experience was. Thanks, San Jose Symphony!

Advice for aspiring music performance majors

I have a B.M. and M.M. in Double Bass Performance from Northwestern University. Although I had a good financial package for my undergraduate degree and had a full-tuition fellowship or my graduate degree, I still owe tens of thousands of dollars in student loans for these degrees. I am glad that I did both of these programs, but if I would have one single piece of advice for an aspiring music performance major it would be to realize this:

Music performance degrees are completely superfluous to your pursuit of a music performance career.

I love college and learning, and this essay is really not about me.I wouldn’t trade my education for anything, and I am actually starting a new degree program in the next few months.I did not follow the advice I am giving here.Am I still happy?Yes.Am I a successful music performer?Some would think so.Am I at the top of my profession?No.

This advice is based on what I have learned playing with and speaking with countless individuals from major symphony orchestras. It is not advice on how to be a well-educated, happy, balanced musician and person. In fact, the advice I have may make you a neurotic mess, but it is, I feel, the way that a majority of people that land major professional symphony positions achieve this goal. If you want to play in the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony, Philadelphia Orchestra, Cleveland Orchestra or Boston Symphony then follow this advice.

Also, although this advice pertains to all instruments, it is mainly about the double bass. It is also based on my experience and knowledge of the American orchestral audition system (not for solo instruments or non-U.S. orchestra auditions). Auditions in other countries may work quite differently.

Finally, if you ever plan on doing anything at all outside of music performance (and very few people are interested in only music performance, even professional symphonic players) then a quality, well-rounded education is essential. I have used my Northwestern degrees to better my life and I feel that having these degrees has really helped me. Still, I know that all of my playing achievements had nothing to do with where I went to school. I could have never have gone to college and only taken private lessons and be doing the playing I am doing now. Most of my colleagues have no idea that I went to Northwestern (or that I went to college at all).

1 – Your private teacher is everything–college is optional

Does this mean that I shouldn’t have gone to college? Certainly not. I do, after all, have two degrees from a prestigious university, and I like to think that the education I have gotten from these degrees has helped me in my life. I feel that it is very important for a student considering a pursuit of classical music performance to realize that there is one (and only one) thing to consider—your teacher.

The quality of the music school, the location, the cost, the academic rigor (or lack thereof), the actual degree you are receiving—none of these things matter to a real student of music performance. To land a full-time salaried position in the insanely competitive field of classical music performance one needs to study from the best in the business, and there are only a handful of people for each instrument that qualify.

How do you identify these “super teachers”? Karl Olsen of the Louisville Orchestra has since 1997 kept a list of all the winners of salaried orchestral double bass positions and where these individuals went to school. Study this list:

Winners of all major US auditions 1997-present

This list comes from Karl Olsen of the Louisville Orchestra. Check out his posts at TalkBass.com (his handle is KPO), and check out Karl’s biography and teaching information here. Karl teaches at the University of Kentucky and is a valuable contributor to the double bass community. He has contributed countless helpful posts on that website about practicing and orchestral auditioning, and he keeps updating this list.

WINNERS LIST

December, 2005 Update:

-1997:
Minnesota Orchestra: no winner

-1998:
Cincinntai Symhpony: Boris Astafiev (Columbus Sym)
Oregon Symphony: Jason Schooler (Cincinnati Conservatory of Music)
Minnesota Orchestra: Matthew Frischman (Curtis Institute)
Utah Symphony: Asst. Principal audition was won by Corbin
Johnston, a student of Lawrence Wolfe and Edwin Barker (In addition a section bass position was won by Tom Zera (Juilliard) at the same audition)

-1999
Los Angeles Philharmonic: David Moore (Houston Sym)
Louisville Orchestra: Kingsley Wood (Peabody Conservatory)
Houston Symphony: Ali Yazdanfar (Peabody, Rice)
New York Philharmonic: David Grossman (Student of principal/Juiliard)
Colorado Symphony: Jonathan Burnstein (Rice U.)
Charleston Symphony, Principal: Charles Barr (Curtis)
National Symphony: Ali Yazdanfar (Houston sym.)
New Mexico Symphony: Kathy Olszowka (Indiana University)
San Antonio Symphony: Zlatan Redzic (I.U.)

-2000
Kansas City Symphony, 1-year spot: Ju-Fang Liu (I.U.)
President’s Own Marine Band: Eric Sabo (Arizona State U.)
Seattle Symphony: Jonathan Burnstein (Rice, Colorado Sym.)
Buffalo Philharmonic: Edmond Gnekow (I.U.)
Tulsa Phil, principal: Dan Johnson (Iowa?)
Dallas Symphony, principal: no winner?
Columbus Symphony: Jena Huebner (Peabody)
Houston Symphony: Burke Shaw
Cleveland Orchestra: Charles Carleton (Juilliard/Curtis)
San Francisco Sym., principal: Ali Yazdanfar (not retained?!)

-2001
Metropolitan Opera Orchestra: Kingsley Wood (Peabody, Louisville Orchestra)
Alabama Symphony: Long Luo (Juilliard)
Oregon Symphony: no winner (for 2 spots!)
Florida Philharmonic, principal: Shigeru Ishikawa (member of section )
Louisville Orchestra: Karl Olsen (I.U., U-Wisconsin)
Cleveland Orchestra: Eric Harris (principal St Louis) won, then left for SanFran;
…the runnerup Charles Barr (Curtis), got the job.
Montreal Sym., principal: Ali Yazdanfar (now going back to National)

-2002
Charleston Symphony, principal: Scott Pingle (Manhattan)
National Symphony: cancelled; they welcome Ali Yazdanfar back
Baltimore Symphony: Mark Huang (Nashville Symphony)
Oregon Symphony: Paul DeNola (I.U., U.S.C.)
San Francisco Sym., principal: Eric Harris (not retained?!@#!?)

-2003
Indianapolis Sym., principal: Ju-Fang Liu (I.U.)
Boston Symphony: Ben Levy (Rice U., New England Conservatory)
Calgary Philharmonic: Jeff White (I.U.)
Grant Park Orchestra: Andy Anderson (I.U.)
Nashville Symphony, principal: Joel Reist (member of section)
resulting section spot was offered to runner-up, Ryan Kamm (I.U., Boston)
Louisianna Philharmonic: Colin Corner (I.U.)
Naples Philharmonic: Matt Medlock (Boston, Rice)
New York Philharmonic: Satoshi Okamoto (San Antonio, Juilliard; student of principal)
Louisville Orchestra, principal: postponed
San Francisco Sym., principal: Hired noone again!?
San Diego, Principal and Asst.Principal: Jeremy Kurtz, principal(Curtis, Rice), Susan Wulff, Asst. (member of section, USC)

-2004:
San Fransisco, Principal, YET AGAIN!:Scott Pingel, on a Trial Year? Ira Gold, runner-up?
Chicago Lyric Opera: Andy Anderson (I.U., Grant Park)
Vancouver Symphony, associate: Colin Corner (IU, Louisiana Phil)
Detroit Symphony, Principal: No Hire….
San Antonio Symphony, Asst. Principal: Doug Balliet (Harvard)
Louisville Orchestra, Principal: Burt Witzel (Curtis Institute)
St Louis Symphony: (2 positions) audition delayed finished until May 2005
Winnipeg, Principal: Merideth “Bob” Johnson, I think, was the winner?

-2005
Ottawa: National Arts Center, Principal: Ben Jensen (I.U.) not retained after trial weeks?
Milwaukee Symphony: Principal AND Ass’t Principal: Zach (?) = assistant?
Detroit Symphony, Principal: again, not even any finalists?
St Louis, 2 positions: Sarah Hogan (IU, Rice, SLSO 1-yr sub!) and Dave DeRiso (Rice, New World, SLSO sub-runner-up!)
Grand Rapids, Principal: Joe Conyers (Curtis)
Alabama: no winner?
Metropolitan Opera Association: Dan Krekler (IU, Minn., MSM)
Seattle: Joe Kauffman (UNT)
National Symphony, 2 positions: Ira Gold! …other position remains open
Calgary Philharmonic: Tom McGary (IU)
Florida Orchestra: Aaron White (SMU, Duquesne)also 1 yr. Asst.Principal here in Louisville!
Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony, Principal: Tom McGary (IU)
Ottawa N.A.C… Joel Quarrington appointed principal? confirmed? not on website yet?
Detroit Principal 3x – still in trial weeks?

2006
Minnesota Orchestra: Ass’t: Fora Baltacigil(Curtis), Section: Colin Corner (IU, New Orleans, Vancouver)
Kansas City Symphony: Jeff Kail (IU)

Do you see any trends? Notice how over half of the people on this attended Indiana University, Boston University, Rice University, or the Curtis Institute? Study at these schools—that’s the simplest way to be successful. Ed Barker, Hal Robinson, Bruce Bransby, and Tim Pitts have a proven track record of turning out job winners, and being in one of these four bass studios at some point in your study is a very good idea.

If you do not study at these schools, can you still get into the Chicago Symphony as a double bassist? Absolutely! Notice that even though a preponderance of successful candidates went to these four schools, there are many other schools represented. It is possible to succeed regardless of where you go to school and study with. These four schools are simply the four powerhouse bass schools at the moment.

Understand that intelligence and music performance ability do not have to go hand in hand, and neither do traditional education and music performance development. When an orchestra holds an audition the only thing that matters is your playing ability. Education, personality, communication skills, and virtually every other skill that traditionally factors into a job interview process don’t matter for an orchestra audition. This is something that is difficult for non-musicians (like parents, relatives, and friends) to grasp. No one cares where you went to school! Do you like to shoot rats at the dump and scream obscenities at people? It’s all good if you can play a great audition.

2 – Study with a professional orchestra player if you want to play professionally

Examine the above list one more time. Do you see many teachers known as soloists on that list? I sure don’t. Bass players wishing a career in orchestral performance need to study with people who either are or have been in professional orchestras. If you want to be a bass soloist, great! Starbucks is always hiring (aspiring bass soloists can get a head start by downloading their application here), and I’m sure those expensive degrees and those Bottesini showpiece chops you developed will help you there.

3 – Put your instrumental development before everything else

Classes don’t matter. Again, I personally do not agree with this at all. I am an educator, and I got a ton out of my various music and non-music classes that I put into use every day, but the unfortunate truth is that going to Music Theory class will not help you to land that salaried orchestral job. It just won’t. It will make you better educated, well-rounded, and better able to comprehend what you are playing. It also will likely make you a better colleague, a better educator, a more valuable member of the musical community. Many of my job-winning colleagues never went to class. I always went to class (seriously—I don’t think I ever missed a single class in my undergraduate or graduate study). I am jobless. Draw your own conclusions.

4 – Do whatever it takes to study with and interact with the best in the business

If you aren’t studying with the best of the best, find a way to take some lessons with them anyway. Does it seem crazy to drive from Chicago to Houston for lessons every month or from Atlanta to Houston every week? Well, you had better get used to it, because that is what the audition circuit is like, and if you aren’t willing to do it there are 50 other people playing your instrument that are willing (and doing it right now). You never know when you will get that one golden nugget of information that will fix that shift, bow stroke, tonal snafu, clarify that phrase, or relax that one particular back muscle that is standing in your way. Take every opportunity you can to play for the best of the best.

Double bass teachers tend to be fairly approachable, and the best teachers teach at summer institutes and do master classes throughout the year. Go to Aspen! Go to Tanglewood! A huge percentage of successful audtionees have done these programs at some time.

5 – Be prepared for a long, hard road

I know many colleagues who did all that I described above and are still jobless. Friends of mine have been auditioning for years without winning a job. Sometimes they make the finals and don’t advance out of the first round the next time. Be prepared to sacrifice family, friends, happiness, and financial security to take auditions. I auditioned for the Minnesota Orchestra last year, and there were 140 candidates. Guess where the two winners had gone to school? Indiana University and Curtis.

Auditions cost a lot of money, particularly for bass players. The expense of flying with a bass, renting a car, and getting a hotel room can easily surpass $1000 per audition. Some auditions make you wait four or five days between the preliminary and final rounds. None of these expenses (at least for the preliminary round) are covered by the orchestra. Expect to lose a lot of cash auditioning.

6 – Resources

Luckily, you are not alone on the path to a music performance career. Although the road can be long and frustrating, at least there are a lot of resources devoted to this subject:

  1. Don Greene – Performance Success

Many musicians have found success with Don Greene’s methods. Don has an innovative way of teaching coping skills under pressure, and many musicians have found success incorporating his methods. Check out his books here.

  1. Douglas Yeo Trombone Website

This is probably the oldest and best audition resource site out there. I have been reading Doug’s articles since 1997, and I find them extremely insightful and helpful.

His whole website is full of literally hundreds of articles and resources. Here are some of the most helpful:

Taking auditions (tips)

Performance anxiety

My journey

What makes good teachers and students

  1. TalkBass.com

Check out the TalkBass.com forums for great audition news and advice. Thinking about a particular school or teacher? Ask your question in the forums and you are bound to get some great advice.

  1. Aspen Music Festival and Tanglewood Music Center

Audition and participate in these festivals if you can! I wish someone would survey the audition winners on Karl Olsen’s list and see how many of them participated in either Tanglewood or Aspen. I am sure it would be over 50% of them.

You play solo…I dance!

In the summer of 1998 I played bass for the Schleswig-Holstein Musik Festival. This festival takes place in the extreme northern part of Germany very close to the North Sea. It was an absolute blast to play in this festival.

The bass section was filled with a bunch of interesting characters from Venezuela, Sweden, China, Hungary, the United States, and Turkey. Our Turkish bass player was named Burak, and this story is mainly about him. Burak is holding the neck of the bass in this photo. Jeff Beecher the new principal bass for the Toronto Symphony, is holding the tailpiece.

Our last concert series of the season was a Leonard Bernstein tribute concert. Bernstein had started this festival in the late 1980s, and this concert consisted entirely of his music. One of the pieces was his Serenade for Orchestra. It is a cute and charming piece with many different dances and styles for each movement. One of the movements is called “Turkey Trot”. Burak got really excited about this, not realizing that it the title refers to the bird and not the country. Burak’s English was definitely a work in progress at this point.

We were both on the first stand for this concert—I was playing principal. “Turkey Trot” features a bass solo at the beginning of the movement. It is a simple country/western bass line and nothing to write home about, but Burak wanted to take it to the next level.

“Jason? First performance, Maybe I play solo!” he asked.

“Sure, Burak,” I replied.

“Jason?”

“Yes?”

“Next performance, you play solo….I dance!”

I wasn’t expecting this question, but I told him that this was OK by me.

Burak had brought all sorts of Turkey stickers and flags with him to Germany (many with his face on them). I’ve still got some of them somewhere—maybe I’ll dig them up one day and post them on the blog. He was all set.

The first performance came and Burak played the solo. He is actually an amazing bass player, and he played it very well. The next performance I started the bass solo at the beginning of “Turkey Trot” and, sure enough, Burak got off of his stool, pulled a Turkish flag on a little stick out of his pocket, and started dancing and waving the flag around.

The entire first violin section (which wasn’t playing at the time) immediately burst into laughter, and the conductor started glancing around out of the corer of his eye to see what was going on. The entire bass section was laughing very, very hard as well.

I imagine how it must have looked to this German audience listening to a fluffy American piece like Bernstein’s Serenade to have a crazy spiky haired Turkish bass player suddenly jump up and start dancing and waving the Turkish flag during the country/western movement. I’m not sure whether or not the conductor ever realized what was going on.

We had all sorts of really strange experiences at this festival as a bass section, mostly because of Wolfgang Guettler, our bass coach for the first half of the festival. Unfortunately, some of these stories are a little too raunchy for this G-rated blog, so I’ll have to share them another time in another venue.

Grant Park Symphony Audition Story

I heard this great audition story a few years ago firsthand from the people who were involved. This was one of the rare times where I actually knew both the committee members and the audition candidate in this story.

Auditioning for the Grant Park Symphony
The Grant Park Symphony of Chicago, Illinois was having violin auditions and needed to assemble a committee. This orchestra has a ten week season in the summer, and the majority of the musicians live out of town and only come in to play for the summer. This is a perfect situation for musicians who play in a orchestra that doesn’t have a summer season (most professional orchestras still do not have a summer season here in the U.S.) The orchestra plays in the beautiful new Frank Gehry-designed Pritzker Pavillion in Chicago’s Millennium Park. This is an outstanding place to see a concert. I have played in this facility before, and you can read my story about those experiences here.

The orchestra used to play in a vile little concrete bunker called the Petrillo Music Shell in Grant Park.

This place smells bad, is cramped, and is right next to Chicago’s Columbus Drive, with ambulances, buses, fire trucks, and other noisy activity. Homeless guys would sometimes try to panhandle the orchestra while they were rehearsing. Moving to the Pritzker Pavillion was a huge step up.

Figuring out Audition Committees
One challenges of having an orchestra made up of out-of-towners is the difficulty of assembling audition committees. The auditions happen during the typical orchestra season (Fall through Spring), so only those musicians who live in Chicago are typically on the audition committees. Several of my colleagues are in the Grant Park Symphony, and they spend an awful lot of time being on these committees in the winter and the spring.

The Grant Park Symphony is an extremely fine ensemble. Even though it is an outdoor summer park orchestra, it has a very high musical standard and really outstanding players. In the past, however, there have been some pretty eccentric characters in the orchestra. This story is about one of those characters.

Where’d They Get This Guy?
One year the orchestra had an especially hard time finding committee members for an upcoming violin audition, and they asked one of the aforementioned characters (I’ll call him Mr. Strange) to serve on the committee. They must have been really hard up for committee members, because this is the sort of guy you really don’t want making decisions on he future of the orchestra.

One should be able to get away with being a little weird while on an audition committee–after all, you just have to sit there behind the screen and vote yes or no. Mr. Strange was a pretty noisy guy, however. According to my colleagues, at one point while a violin candidate was playing Mr. Strange all of a sudden started fidgeting extremely loudly with his newspaper, paging through it, clearing his throat, and making “harumph” sounds.

Later in the day, as one violinist was playing his audition, Mr. Strange apparently had to sneeze. He must have tried to stifle it, but what came out instead was an enormous sound, like a yelping whoopee cushion:

“BRAAAAAAACK!”

The violinist behind the screen stopped playing.

Long pause.

From behind the screen, the proctor (the person assisting the audition candidate) asks the committee:

“Is everything all right?”

“Yes,” said one of the committee members.

Pause.

“Because the candidate thought they heard a sound.”

From the Candidate’s Perspective
Can you imagine how loud that “BRAAAAAAACK!” must have been to have made him actually stop playing and ask that question? I have heard coughing, shuffling feet, or whispering behind the screen many times in auditions, but I can’t imagine how loud that sound must have been to actually stop the audition and make the guy ask that question.

The funny thing is, I knew the guy auditioning! He now plays violin for the Concertgebouw Orchestra, and we played together for many years in the IRIS Chamber Orchestra. I had originally heard this story from my colleagues on the committee, but I was having dinner with the violinist down in Tennessee a year later when my violinist friend started telling this story about auditioning for the Grant Park Symphony! He told me that he was right in the middle of playing and he heard this extremely loud sound. He wasn’t sure if it was directed at him or if someone was injured behind the screen, and he stopped, not sure what to do. He asked to proctor to check and see if everything was OK behind the screen. He ended up winning a one-year position from that audition, so it ended up working out well for him anyway.

You never really know who’s behind the screen in an audition. Sometimes you may end up auditioning for someone like Mr. Strange, so if you ever hear a “BRAAAAACK!” you may just want to keep playing and save everybody some embarrassment.

Symphony on the Swamp

During the summers of 2001 and 2002 I played double bass for the Spoleto Festival USA in Charleston, South Carolina. Originally this organization was part of the Festival of Two Worlds that Gian Carlo Menotti started in conjunction with Spoleto, Italy, and the same orchestra was used for both the Charleston and Spoleto segments of the festival. Several years ago the two festivals split, and I ended up playing for the American festival.

This festival was really a lot of fun. Musicians played operatic, symphonic, and chamber music for a month, and I spent my free time either in the beautiful historic district of Charleston or on the nearby beach. The festival occurs in May, which is a great month for Charleston but an iffy month for Chicago, so I managed to escape jacket weather for shorts and sunglasses weather (which I love) for a couple of springs. The festival ends with a concert on the grounds of Middleton Place, an old plantation just outside of Charleston. This is what the grounds we played on look like:

Note that the grounds, while very pretty, are adjacent to a giant swamp. Playing a concert in a swamp is always a bad idea, for reasons which I shall describe later.


Many musicians figured out a way to weasel out of this concert, but I got stuck playing it both years. We played fairly standard lighter fare suitable for outdoor crowds–Bolero, American Salute, Bernstein medleys, and the like. This was a pretty standard outdoor summer concert…..until it started to get dark.

The problem with playing a concert in a swamp at night is that swamps have bugs. Lots of bugs. Small bugs, medium-sized bugs, flying bugs, crawling bugs, fuzzy bugs, shiny bugs, and big scary bugs. Lots and lots of bugs. And, when it gets dark outside and big bright lights are turned on over the orchestra and nowhere else for miles around, the bugs like to come and pay the orchestra a visit.

The first year I played the swamp concert we had most of the rehearsals in a gym on the campus of the College of Charleston (where we stayed for the festival). The dress rehearsal happened late afternoon/early evening the day before the concert in the swamp. As it started to get dark that night lots of small bugs started to fly around our music stands and the lights above us. I tried to wave them off with my bow and brush them off of the music stand, but it was a losing battle and pretty unpleasant to play with all of that distraction. We bass players agreed to buy some bug spray and citronella candles for the next evening’s performance.

I thought that the concert would be unpleasant with all of those bugs flying around. I didn’t realize that it hadn’t gotten REALLY dark that night, and there were far worse things to come.

The night of the concert dusk approached and the little bugs came out just like before, but we had our citronella candles and were appropriately doused in bug spray. Then it started to get darker and some bigger critters came out. I noticed little crawling bugs on the music, getting into my bow hair, and landing on my fingerboard. I tried to get them out of my bow hair so that I wouldn’t have bug guts mashed into my rosin, and tried to get them off of the music so they wouldn’t get smooshed on the pages.

Then it got truly dark and swarms of flying Junebugs came out of the swamp. Junebugs are big orange flying beetles always found flinging themselves against porch lights here in Illinois. The orchestra is underneath what is essentially the world’s biggest porch light, and the Junebugs began to come out of the swamp like a plague of locusts, fly into the hot lights above the orchestra, and fall, still writhing and sizzling, onto the orchestra! Being rained on by dying insects is not on my top ten list of favorite activities, and it was amazing to watch the orchestra start to deal with the horror show they were now a part of while still trying to keep playing. These bugs were everywhere–in my hair, on my jacket, flying around the stand lights–I looked up at my scroll at one point and saw a Junebug crawl into my pegbox! Most of us kept playing as best we could, but it was almost impossible to get through the concert. My stand partner at one point stopped playing and just started waving his arms around in the air, trying in vain to get these bugs off of him.

When I unpacked my bass the next day there were dozens of Junebug corpses on my case, in my pegbox, smooshed on my bass, and even INSIDE my instrument! I shook t and heard little Junebug bodies rattling around, and I had to flip it upside down and shake it to get them out.

There were worse things than Junebugs out there that night. At one point I felt something hit me hard (like someone throwing a tennis ball at me) on my left shoulder. I never figured out what it was, and I never want to know.


The real fun came the following year at Spoleto. I was stuck playing the swamp show yet again. This time the management decided to keep all of the rehearsals at the College of Charleston and only do the performance in the swamp. Most of the orchestra was new that year, and I smiled, knowing what was in store for them that night. We got to the swamp and pretty much the same scenario played out, only I just sat there, grinning, as the insects started to join us, watching the orchestra’s reaction change from mild discomfort with the first wave of little bugs, irritation at the second wave of medium-sized bugs, and panic during the third wave of Junebugs and other big nasty things.

My grin got considerably wider as one particularly annoying cellist got so freaked out that he started crying. Maybe I’m mean, but I’m sure that you would grin too if you had spent a summer around this guy. At the concert he kept stomping his feet, brushing at his legs, brushing at his hair–at one point he even stood up and started wiping all of the insects off of his body. He always had his air all gelled up, and I wonder if the Junebugs were attracted to his fancy hair gel.


You’ve got to wonder what the Spoleto Festival USA management thinks of its musicians. Anyone who would subject an orchestra year after year to playing under those conditions must not care much about their players. It is a non-union gig that hires mostly college students for the summer (and re-auditions the entire orchestra each year), so there is no sort of bargaining power at all that the musicians have. This swamp concert is the main reason why I quit auditioning for this festival after two summers. Everything else about the experience was great–great concerts, excellent Southern food, beautiful beaches, day trips to Fort Sumter, and the like were all fabulous fun. But the prospect of being attacked by swarms of insects while trying to give a good performance is enough to keep me away for the rest of my life.