Youth Concerto Competition Application - Symphony Orchestra: Fill & Download for Free

In professional orchestras, not very.For example, the Berlin Philharmonic only auditions for ‘Violin Tutti’:Two Violins tuttiRequired pieces: a Mozart-Concerto of our own choice (No. 1-5) and a concerto of our own choiceApplication deadline: 11 August 2017Audition: 21/22 September 2017[1]The players then rotate between desks. This is because, in the Berlin Phil, every player is good enough to be the leader of a lesser orchestra, so they just sit where they’re asked and play the living heck out of everything.Aline Champion-Hennecka, Berlin Philharmonic 1st Violin, plays the living heck out of Manon Lescaut.Principal players are selected more rigorously. They will go through multiple rounds of auditions and be asked to guest lead rehearsals and concerts. (In fact, members of the Berlin Phil need a two-year trial period, although that’s not the case for other professional orchestras.[2] )In good orchestras, they are just the “leader among equals”[3] , although often they have more of a virtuoso background: Noah Bendix-Balgley, 1st concertmaster of the Berlin Phil, and Josef Spacek, previous leader of the Czech Philharmonic, were both laureates of the Queen Elisabeth Competition in Brussels.Some orchestras do have separate auditions for the first few desks or positions. In the London Symphony Orchestra, there are different Leaders, Co-Leaders, and Sub-Principals[4] .I agree with Thomas that, in community and youth orchestras, often the stronger players are near the front. However it is also true that, as Martin says, that it is down to personal connections too.I think, unless you are the principal, you shouldn’t let your self worth be governed by seating position in amateur orchestras. Out in the real world, your desk number means little. Practice your excerpts instead!Footnotes[1] Vacant positions - Berliner Philharmoniker[2] Berlin Philharmonic: Taming the wild orchestral beast[3] Noah Bendix-Balgley, 1st Concertmaster[4] London Symphony Orchestra - Strings

I could say that what I did in high school helped set me up to take on even more extracurriculars at MIT and then were helpful after MIT.Before MIT, I did:started and was elected president of sci-fi/fantasy club:organized RPGs, ran audio/visual for moviestaught me a lot about psychology and some about discernmentPhysics Olympics: we won the UBC Physics Olympics (top school in province)I was the captaintaught me some about team chemistry, harnessing strengths, empowering voicesMusiccity-wide Youth Symphony Orchestra (top 4 in the city)concerto competition, French horn, provincial finalistSchool ensembles like concert band, chamber orchestra, pit orchestra.Amusingly this had a bit of a weird side effect: every parent thought I was crazy for not wanting to go to UBC for Music. Just about everyone who was that serious about music wanted to go into music.Little League baseball-related stuffumpire (referee)head coach applying sabermetrics — also taught me a bit more about applying psychology (influencing people for the good). Oh yeah, my head coaching record is pretty lopsided, something like 14 wins-2 losses.Part-time work (learned value of money), tutoring students, etc.At MIT:Music:MIT Symphony Orchestra: auditioned and successfully got the only available position (1 open chair, 10 people auditioned). This also became the performance part of my music minor.Amusingly I had orchestras from around Boston cold-call me and ask if I could be a substitute or play for them if someone were sick (e.g., Longwood, some others).MIT Chamber OrchestraI dabbled and did a bunch of stuff to try them out. They certainly enriched my life (I wrote for the newspaper, I did production for the newspaper, I did some stuff for my dorm hall, etc.)I restarted the MIT Canadians Club.had to put together bylaws, budgets, write for money, galvanize interest. I worked with Canucks@Harvard (the Harvard Canadian Club) a bit.I organized some intramural teams.I played a bunch of intramurals. Plus I refereed ice hockey (= got paid to exercise).I became a Christian and I went to MIT Hillel to learn Hebrew. Among many other things.After MIT:a female acquaintance and her female friend were coaching a Little League baseball team, and it was mostly comprised of boys who had absentee dad figures. They had lost every single game thus far and I was curious. So I ‘volunteered’ to coach. Wink wink. The boys won that game.I played ice hockey until my oldest kid was born. (I decided I should try to help my wife.) It was a good way to keep motivated to exercise.My church membership is at a moderately large church and I’ve been a part of it for 22 years. Pretty quickly I got involved in various levels of lay ministry, largely due to my organizational skills. I had been asked twice to candidate as an elder but I’ve declined (the first year was when I got married, the second was after a difficult pregnancy for my wife).I’ve organized a bunch of interesting things including a graduate-level leadership development seminar.Having intellectual gifts, I went to seminary (“Christian graduate school”) part-time while working in high tech full-time.I was pretty involved at leadership levels at my church.I was involved for a while with the MIT Club of Boston (both as a participant and as an organizer). You’ll probably see pictures of me somewhere flipping burgers (at the summer barbecue).We were looking into a charity poker tournament for a while so I decided I needed some experience being a tournament director. So I got a second job doing that (it was fun being a poker tournament director). My friends and I had our Sunday night no cash/for bragging rights only home game and we used to play at the venue anyway, so when the Amateur Poker League fired their less-than-reliable tournament director and was about to shut down the venue, I stepped in and ran that for a couple of years.I still coach, but my daughter doesn’t want to do baseball and I had changed jobs this Spring so baseball wasn’t going to work. I coach soccer as well.I interview for MIT. This gives me a lot of insight into the college application process as well as what it takes. Since I have access to the data, I started compiling information on the five International Science Olympiads as MIT has a ton of students and alumni involved. (I half-jokingly say that I am front-running my college application process for my kids, who are just under a decade out from applying.)About 10–15 years ago, at one of my jobs, I ran into the head of security for Origins Game Fair (he was a software developer for my team). I realized it was an interesting opportunity to volunteer to see a different culture. My friend Matt got me into Settlers of Catan, so I played against a bunch of US National Champions (Patrick Chan, Scott Scribner, and the 2019 US National Champion is a friend/former coworker, Ian Dembsky).I would say extracurriculars have enriched my life. They’ve made me more interesting. I have a lot of various hobbies. I’ve gained a lot of skills relatively cheaply. I’ve developed organizational skills and honed interpersonal skills. I’ve met a lot of interesting people.

It’s not just about studying, but 1) what the average public high school applicant does around here and 2) I can discuss a bit about what my high school schedule looked like, 3) how the transition was.Around these parts, I understand students usually take something around 7 “normal” or “full” classes at any time. A full class would be like Algebra-Statistics-Pre-Calculus, AP Calculus AB or BC, English 1/2/3/4, US History 1, etc. Alternately, the schools around here substitute two half classes per one “normal” class. Some of the half-classes are Physical Education and other minor things (lifeskills, drafting, speech, etc.)My general sense is that applicants usually do the full load of 7 normal/full classes and then self-study 1–2 subjects on their own, and then manage some number of extracurriculars. Total work for more aggressive workloads is probably like closer to 50 hours a week between classes and homework. 7 normal classes not of the AP Calculus BC/Physics C type, maybe closer to 35–40 hours a week.My high school load, well — my counselors thought I was insane. Normal class load was also 7 or 8 classes (your choice). Honor roll students (top 10%) were granted a 9th class. I had 9 academic classes and 2 non-academic classes and self-studied 2–3 things on my own. (Yes, you read that right: 11 total classes, including 9 academic ones. Only Chamber Orchestra was “easy” since I practiced French horn every day and played at a much higher level so I only attended dress rehearsal before concerts.)I would also fully admit that a lot of the “training” begins long before high school — like being good at certain subjects in high school, you have to be good at them in elementary/primary school and middle school. You’re building on foundations. I targeted MIT at the beginning of eighth grade and was “building my profile” since that point.Eleventh grade load: French 12 Honors, German 11, English 11, Physics 11, Physics 12, Social Studies 11, Algebra 12 Honors, Chemistry 11, Biology 11, Concert Band 11, Chamber Orchestra 11.Twelfth grade load: AP French plus Advanced French Literature Seminar, German 12, Russian 12, English 12, Physics 12 Honors, 20th Century World History, AP Calculus AB, Chemistry 12 Honors, Biology 12 Honors, Concert Band 12, Chamber Orchestra 12. Self-studied: Western Music History, Music Harmony, Caltech’s First-year Physics.I probably averaged much higher, probably like 60–70 hours a week for school and then another 5-10 hours of self-studying and SAT prep (like 98% focused on English/Verbal related).High school GPA: 4.0 unweighted / 4.0 (top 2%, top STEM student)I’d also mention: I had very solid study habits, organizational skills, etc. and earlier in high school, I had self-studied “a lot of meta” (like different methods of studying, notetaking like mind mapping, different ways to learn, mnemonics and acronyms and alliterations and acrostics and so on).Extracurriculars: City-wide honors youth symphony, captain of Physics Olympics team, tutoring, president and founder of sci-fi/fantasy club, concert pianist and accompanist. [Seasonal / some of the year: pit orchestra for musical, umpire and head coach for Little League baseball team, etc.]My major extracurricular was music — between French horn (I was definitely top four in my city, won the city-wide concerto competition, was a provincial semi-finalist) and piano (I was good enough to do piano concertos).Transition to MIT, Freshman year: Not too hard! Actually my high school training prepared me pretty well. I placed out of 8.01 (Calculus-based Classical Mechanics/Newtonian Physics) and the Chemistry 12 Honors from my high school/provincial curriculum and some of the Chemistry olympics stuff that I was doing (plus I knew about Schrödinger’s Equations) allowed me to place of 5.11x.I also successfully auditioned for MIT Symphony Orchestra (one vacant seat, 9 others auditioned for it).However, it gets progressively harder over Freshman year. A lot of MIT freshmen take 54 units in the Fall and 57 in the Spring. That works out to be around 50–60 hours of work most weeks with peaks slightly higher (maybe as high as 65 hours).Don’t be lulled into thinking freshman year is typical as classes get conceptually harder and have more work.