Welcome to the show. Today we’re tackling a topic that sends chills down the spines of many: mastering auditions. Whether you’re aiming for a spot in an orchestra, prepping for a college jury, or even gearing up for that pivotal job interview, the anxiety and fear of auditions is a universal experience.

Auditions can feel like stepping into the unknown, a daunting challenge that tests not only your skills but also your nerves. But here's the good news: just like any other challenge, the more you familiarize yourself with the process, the less intimidating it becomes. Remember the first time you rode a bike or spoke in public? The fear melted away with practice and preparation, and auditions are no different.

Our guest on this episode is Micah Wilkinson, principal trumpet with the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra. Micah has been on both sides of the audition table and understands the nuances that can make or break a performance.

Our hope is that by the end of this episode, you’ll feel more confident and equipped to tackle your next big opportunity with ease. Let’s turn those audition fears into triumphs!

Episode Highlights:

-Micah shares his musical background in the Atlanta area...02:25

-"You have what it takes to be a principal player"; a mentor spurs on a promising career...06:06

-Micah's personal experience with auditions (what worked, what didn't)...12:05

-Success in certain roles requires a certain amount of "healthy arrogance"...17:25

-Focus on the music vs. YOU and no one hardly notices the mistakes...23:19

-How do you play "consistently"; and what does "consistency" even mean?...28:35

-How a giant whiteboard and recording device can help you track progress on audition prep...32:00

-"There's no doubt in my mind the person who won [the recent PSO audition] was more prepared than anyone else"...35:00

-View articulation more as properly expressing the language of the music vs. tonguing or fingering with a certain technique...43:00

-Plus whatever your discerning ears deem worthy of your time and interest...

Episode Sponsor:

MF Lip Grip

About the Guest:

Micah Wilkinson has enjoyed a varied career as an orchestral musician, soloist, chamber artist, and teacher. He was appointed Principal Trumpet of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra by Music Director Manfred Honeck in September 2017. Wilkinson came to the Pittsburgh Symphony from the San Diego Symphony, where he served as Principal Trumpet for three years. He previously held positions with the Houston Symphony, the San Francisco Symphony, the Oregon Symphony, and the Tucson Symphony. He recently performed in subscription programs as Guest Principal Trumpet with the New York Philharmonic, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, St. Louis Symphony, and the Seoul Philharmonic. In the summers, he performs as Principal Trumpet of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra.

As an educator, he strives to help the next generation of brass players to find their own unique voices as musical artists. He is quickly becoming one of the most sought-after instructors for trumpet in the United States and enjoys working privately with students at his home studio in Pittsburgh and online through virtual platforms. He is currently on the faculty at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh and at the Chautauqua Institution School of Music. He has also taught at the Aspen Music Festival, Eastman Summer Music Institute, Round Top Festival Hill Institute, and the Brevard Music Center. He previously served on the faculties of the University of Houston and Portland State University, and has presented master classes and clinics for colleges and universities all over the United States, as well as Europe and Asia.

Wilkinson grew up in Norcross, Georgia. A proud graduate of St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, he pursued additional studies at Arizona State University and the Staatliche Hochschule für Musik in Freiburg, Germany. His primary teachers include Martin Hodel, David Hickman, Larry Black, and Anthony Plog. He lives in the South Hills of Pittsburgh with his wife Stefani, a professional oboist; their beautiful daughters Eleanor and Amelia; and their goofy Basset Hound Barber.

Body + Mind + Spirit = Mastery. Now available is a collection of excerpts from some of the most popular episodes of the Trumpet Dynamics podcast featuring the likes of Chris Coletti, Sergei Nakariakov, Manny Laureano, and more.

It's a FREE download available right now on brassmastery.com!

Mentioned in this episode:

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 Hey folks, welcome to Brass Mastery. I'm James Newcomb and I'm really grateful that you have pressed play on today's episode. We have the privilege, the great honor of having on the show Micah Wilkinson.

He had posted on Facebook that the Pittsburgh Symphony is having open auditions for the Associate Principal position. And that got me to thinking, because I was starting this new show, Brass Mastery, and transitioning from the Trumpet Dynamics brand to the Brass Mastery. So I thought, man, what if we were to devote an entire episode to craft of mastering auditions?

Because Micah obviously has done well with it. With being able to obtain his current position in Pittsburgh and who knows what else beyond, but it seems to be suiting him just fine for now. I just sent him a message, I think on Facebook or looked him up on his website or whatever it is, and he was game.

And it took a little while for the logistics to work out so that we could get together on a zoom call. But here we are. We're going to talk about how to. Master auditions, because it is a frightful thing for so many people, but just like anything, the more, more familiar you are with it, the less scary it is.

That's the way it is with anything. And Mike is going to at least share a couple of things we hope to make us more prepared for auditions. And it could be orchestral auditions, it could be auditions in college or juries, It could even be an audition for a job interview that you really want.

It doesn't really matter the setting. The principles are more or less the same when you get beyond the physicality of brass instruments. I've run my mouth long enough. It's time to bring on our guest, Micah. It's good to have you, man.

Thank you, James. Good to be here.

And I would love to

get us started. Why don't we get to know you a little bit? Can you tell us about your background on trumpet why you started how you started why you still do it? Tell us about yourself

Sure. I grew up mostly in atlanta in the suburbs of atlanta, georgia And we had a great band program there in a bustling growing the fastest growing county in the U.

S. was Gwinnett County when my family moved there going into the 4th grade and band began in the 6th grade, and it was just an assumption that I would join the band. I had played piano and sung in choir and then musical up to that point, but didn't come from a family of professional musicians.

And so I was just doing it. For fun, but it was certainly a part of my life. And then sixth grade band rolled around and it was time to choose an instrument. And I was interested in a few different ones and trombone, saxophone, and trumpet, and the band director gave us an opportunity to try out the mouthpieces.

to see if we could make a good sound on whatever our top three choices were. And I couldn't really make a sound on the trombone or the saxophone, but I made a pretty good buzz on the trumpet. So she said, you're going to play the trumpet.

I went

home announced to my mom, guess what? I'm going to play the trumpet.

And she said, Oh, your dad played the trumpet. I didn't even know that.

Wow.

But he had played that when he was in middle school and high school in Oklahoma. He actually played once with Rafael Mendes because Mendes used to travel around and play with local bands. And so my dad still has the program of one of his, late middle school, early high school performances when Rafael Mendes was the soloist.

I've heard so many stories interviewing people of his impact on it. Just Students who have one brush with Raphael, and they, and high school comes and goes and they give up their instrument. They have obligations, they have jobs and families, so they have to put it aside. But they just revere that moment with Rafael Mendez.

Yeah, just class excellence. Of course, I never met him but I ended up studying at Arizona State with David Hickman for a year of my master's. And that's how Hickman has a relationship with the Mendez family, and the There's a library museum there at Arizona State of Mendez artifacts and things and of course, Hickman has published a lot of his solo works.

And so there's a lot of, strong connection there.

Yeah.

But anyway Back to Atlanta, I ended up playing the trumpet and just loving band. I didn't even start lessons for a couple of years, but I did eventually start private lessons in eighth grade with Kevin Lyons, a local player in the Atlanta area, who was a wonderful first teacher.

And not long after he suggested that I move on to Larry Black, who was in the Atlanta symphony. He played fourth trumpet there and taught a lot of students in the area who, many of whom went on to become professionals. Some of my peers at the time, and some also older students who'd already graduated had already had professional careers.

For example, Chris Martin at the time was principal trumpet of the Atlanta symphony. So when I finally got into the Atlanta symphony youth orchestra he was our coach. And his brother, Michael, was in our section. And we all studied with Larry. Everybody did. And so he's, he was a wonderful influence for me and encouraged me to pursue it professionally if I wanted to.

He said, Micah, if there's anything you can imagine yourself doing other than the trumpet, then you should do that. But I want you to think about it. And if you can't think of anything else, then you have what it takes. And that was my sophomore year of high school. And I decided from that point. This is what I wanted to do.

And then I remember my senior year, he said, Micah, I think you have what it takes to be a principal trumpet player. And I don't tell this to all my students. In fact, the last person I told that to was Chris Martin. And that would have been, maybe 12 years before or something. I had that confidence that he'd given me.

And even though my career didn't. immediately launched into a principal trumpet position somewhere in the back of my mind was that, that was deeply embedded in in my psyche, I think. And eventually I got some opportunities to, to play principal and loved it.

Was that Chris Martin that told you that or Mr.

Black? That was Larry Black. Larry Black told you that. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah. And so he was referencing when Chris Martin had been in high school 12 years prior, he had also told Chris that same thing.

I see.

And then Chris Okay. Okay. So he

told Okay. So he told you that the last person that I told this to was Chris Martin?

Okay. Got it.

Right.

I thought you were telling me that you hadn't told this to anybody else. Oh yeah. No. Sorry.

Yes. Yeah. Larry said that.

Okay. I lived in Atlanta. I was in the military and stationed there for a year. Oh, okay. And I don't, and I lived in Gwinnett County, but I don't know any of those names.

I guess I wasn't there long enough to get involved in the scene. I was only there for a year.

Okay. Okay. What is the, oh this is interesting, because what do you think Larry saw in you that said, you have what it takes to be a principal trumpet player, because that's a big distinction. There's trumpet player, and then there's principal trumpet player.

That's funny, no one's ever asked me that, and I'm not sure that I've ever really thought deeply about that, him saying that, except that I just took it at face value oh, cool, awesome, I guess I can do that.

Yeah. Yeah. I think that he heard a special something in my sound and in my personality of playing. I had the fundamentals were strong thanks to my work ethic and thanks to my early teaching. And so I had practiced basics and fundamentals in a routine every day, starting in the eighth grade when I started lessons and continued that for, most of my life.

And So that was already in place, I think. And I had the orchestral style stuck. That came to me quickly. And so then beyond that, I think I had a soloistic voice that he heard. And and I think that's what's carried me through.

Yeah. It's carried you to some pretty cool places.

Yeah, I've been very fortunate to get to do what I love.

The Pittsburgh Symphony is not it doesn't often come up in conversation, and no disrespect at all, but it doesn't come up in conversation with Chicago Minnesota, where I'm located other, big fish so called. You don't hear that much about Pittsburgh. I'm sure it's a wonderful group.

It's incredible. Yeah. And I think it depends on maybe who you're talking with. Cause probably the

region too, cause we don't, we wouldn't talk about it that much here in Minnesota.

We have a big European pole. So we tour to Europe often. And when we do we're invited to the most prestigious festivals.

So we frequent the Salzburg festival for example. And usually when we go, we're the only American orchestra invited. And So I think there was a great article by Alex Ross in the New Yorker that was written a few years back about the Pittsburgh Symphony's savage precision. I think that was on the heels of our Grammy that we won for the Shostakovich 5 performance or recording.

I think, so there's I came here having been told this is one of the greatest orchestras in the world. I'd heard people say that's my favorite string section in the world. That's my favorite brass section in the world. It's really, I think, got an incredible reputation. There was a, it's heyday in terms of budget was probably, 15, 20 years ago when there was, two major tours every year and a waiting list for these to get a subscription and just a really big deal.

And we've had music directors. Now Fritz Reiner was music director before we went to Chicago. I think we had Klemperer, we had Steinberg, Mazel, Previn Johnson's and now Hanuk. It's really sub subjectively one of the top 10 in the world.

And I met I didn't mean any disrespect at all with that comment.

Sure no, and I

didn't mean to be defensive necessarily. No, I understand that. Just to clarify where I am.

Some of these groups fly under the radar and there's so much prestige and so much quality that you're not aware of. Like for example, the state of Kentucky has unbelievable trumpet players, unbelievable.

Greg Wing, Michael Tunnel, rest in peace, was a great trumpeter at Louisville. So many wonder, but we think of Kentucky as like this back, backwards place. But you'd never guess that there's such a vast, it's such a bastion of the arts. You don't associate

well, and that, that happened from the early barons of industry, Carnegie and Mellon and Frick and these people who had connections to Pittsburgh and built steel mills here and, railroad and whatnot.

And so then they were philanthropists and so we have. a beautiful hall. Heinz, of course is Heinz Hall. And so it's a great place to play. And so that's, I think how we, along with Cleveland, similarly developed such world class orchestras in smaller towns.

Yes. Smaller markets, as they say in the sports let's get on to our featured topic of this episode auditions.

Let's begin with your experience in auditions. I have some questions as to how to do it, how not to do it. But I want to hear your experience. What was your maybe your first major audition? It could be a symphony. It could be auditioning for the all County band, like the Gwinnett County all stars, whatever it is.

Tell us about your audition experience. And if you're, as much as you're comfortable, tell us about some of the things that didn't go well. And when things began to click, and when you began to experience success.

Sure. I think, it's a fact of life that musicians are going to be auditioning from a young age for positions in all kinds of things.

And so I was auditioning for, like you said, all state band district county, regional band for spots when in the youth wind symphony in high school, I was auditioning for the youth orchestra which I began auditioning for when I started studying with Larry Black my sophomore year of high school, but I didn't get a spot until my senior year.

And I had I think talent and a lot to offer, but what I didn't quite have control over was my nerves and I didn't have quite control over my consistency on the instrument. And of course, that's a challenge for trumpet. And so I learned a lot about that at. Summer camp in Interlochen, Michigan in between my junior and senior year of high school, where we had weekly chair challenges.

And so we could opt to challenge the person 1 chair ahead of us and then we would have a randomly selected passage from our band music that week picked by the teacher and We would draw, or flip a coin, and figure out who's going to play first and who's going to play second. And the rest of the trumpet section would be facing the other direction, and so they wouldn't know who was playing.

And one of us would have to play the passage, and then the other person would play the passage. You got one shot, and then the voting would begin, and the rest of your classmates would vote on who won. And if you were the winner, but you were the lower chair, if you had challenged the other person, then you moved up to the next chair.

And then you could opt to continue the challenge of the next player. And so on it went, and this was the weekly event on Fridays or whenever that was. And I would be sweating bullets and I'd have to prepare myself, mentally in the bathroom. I remember just like trying to find some place by myself to calm my breathing and get ahold of myself.

Cause it was so nerve wracking and I just wouldn't be able to play my best. And so the first few weeks were difficult, but it was, I think, Eight week camp. And by the end of it, I was doing quite well. And I started out last chair and worked my way all the way up to second chair by the end of the camp.

And remain good friends with the guy who was first chair. He plays associate principal in the soul Philharmonic, Jeff Holbrook.

Oh, I know him.

So Jeff and I have ended up working together more recently out in Seoul because he's invited me to come out there and play guest principal with them. And so we we realized the first time I went out there to play that it would, we were 34 years old and exactly half our lives ago was the last time that we played together at Interlochen.

So it's amazing how those things continue.

We were like tracing my duty stations in the army. I knew Jeff when I was stationed in Seoul.

Oh, really? Oh great.

He's a good guy.

Yeah. I learned a lot that summer and I developed confidence from going through that process and putting myself through that rigor and through something really uncomfortable, but eventually it became normal.

And so then when I returned that fall of my senior year, ready for auditions for various things for my college auditions for the all state audition. I had some students at that time and one of my middle school students, I was teaching him and he reminded me of this later. I'd forgotten it, but he said that the day before the all state audition, I told him I'm going to go get first chair tomorrow.

And it was like, matter of fact, wasn't trying to make something of, my ego, I was just like, that's what's going to happen tomorrow. I was so sure of it and it was, that's what happened. I went and got first chair the next day and I just was in a really sweet spot of confidence in my abilities.

And so I think over the course of my life, that's come and gone because as I've gotten better and as I've gotten more aware of what's possible my own abilities don't always match up to what I'm aware of is out there, and so at that time, my, I think my abilities, just about met what I thought was possible at the time.

And so I was really, you could say full of yourself, not in a bad way, but I w I felt yeah, This is what I need to, what, I'm doing everything I can do. And and I had that to offer and I really didn't question myself. And have certainly gone in and out of questioning myself more since then.

Yeah, you do have to have a certain healthy arrogance in order to succeed at trumpet, don't you? Yeah,

you really have, it requires confidence and it requires confidence to be able to execute, to be able to, perform well, to be able to stand in front of people and present what you have. And it also matters that you sound confident.

I think that's a factor, skipping way ahead to, your question about this associate principal trumpet audition that we had in Pittsburgh or any time that I've heard people auditioning or listen to students. play or listen to professionals play, sounding comfortable, sounding poised, sounding confident.

Those things can come across even when you can't see someone. And I think that those players who we admire, Rafael Mendez, like you mentioned, or, any great performer on any instrument is going to sound confident.

And I think the trick is confidence without

And, Phil Smith, who was principal in the New York Philharmonic, talked about hats.

And so you had, and so did Arnold Jacobs tuba player in the Chicago symphony. But he said when he walks into the hall, he puts on his performer hat, or your, you could say your ego or your confidence, and you wear that when it's appropriate, but you're not wearing it.

when you're in any other situation.

That's a good analogy. You hit on two things when you were talking about your own experience that I think we could unpack. And also, Micah mentioned that there was a recent audition for associate principal in Pittsburgh, and it was successful. They found somebody, and the person has agreed to take the position.

So we'll pick his brain a little bit about what actually happened there. And so we can perhaps understand how to do auditions, how not to do auditions. But before we get into that, you mentioned two things, nerves and consistency. And you were talking about, you're at this summer camp and you're playing among other players in your age group, similar ability level, and you're sweating bullets, right?

Yeah. And that's, it comes up. Over and over, because we can learn something and perfect it, and then all of a sudden we're playing in front of people, and it's like we forgot how to play it. And we forget, and we don't factor in the skill set of dealing with our nerves.

Absolutely.

How did you master that?

Not master it, but get to the point where you could function, with those nerves going.

I think I learned to get comfortable with that feeling and to, make friends with it, turn those butterflies into killer bees. And you just and you can feel the adrenaline and, perceive it as nerves, as anxiety, as worry, or as anticipation, as excitement.

And so certainly the perspective of how you deal with those symptoms can really shift things. And so that's been important for me. I've worked with through, various books. Sports psychology is so connected to music performance. And Don Green is a coach who's written several books.

Fight your fear and win was one that I worked through that was very helpful. In high school, my teacher had me read a book called With Winning in Mind, and there was also The Inner Game of Sports, or The Inner Game, or excuse me, The Inner Game of Tennis and also The Inner Game of Music that was adapted by a bass player.

And then there's The New Toughness Training for Sports, which is another sort of sports psychology take on it. And of course, all of this can be applied to Music performance to, execution of any skill under pressure when you have one shot. And I learned skills of centering of calming my breath of being aware of myself talk and, the deeper things that are going on that we might push aside.

But those demons come up, right to the fore when we're on stage by ourselves and all of a sudden we're feeling the pressure and we're. As soon as something starts to go wrong, then that voice comes on, Ah, see, I told you, you do suck. And then we can, really snowball. And imposter syndrome is something that I think has come on later for me as a professional.

Because, once you get these positions and you start to have a status. Then you add higher expectations to your plate, and I'd say, the worst of it is self imposed.

What do you mean imposter? Cause I've heard that term before in various. Yeah. Imposter syndrome is

just that.

I think it's just that feeling that you have that you don't deserve what you have. You don't belong where you are. You haven't, you don't if something goes wrong, then everyone's going to find out who you really are.

Okay. Yeah. You'll be. And

ha, yeah, he's actually not that great, as if everyone's ready to tear you down.

And as if everything that you've built in life and everything you've achieved was really just a scam. That's the worst side of it.

Yeah. And then we realize they don't care. Good or bad. They really, people really don't care. There's two people in the world that actually care about whether we succeed or not.

Everybody else is indifferent. They've got their own problems.

Yes.

And the many people I've talked to about nerves is, it's very similar to what you just said. It's you understand that it's always going to be there. And in fact, if it's not there, then you have a real problem because it might mean that you're just not invested.

You don't really care.

Yeah. It is an indication of how much you care.

Yeah. And, but you just acknowledge that they're there, they're going to be there and you just learn to. Get along. You learn to, you just become familiar with it. And then you can function

with it. And you do it anyway.

Right.

What happens to, and I'm, hate to put you on the spot here, but you are a trumpet player, so I know that there are things, there are times when things don't go the way you expect them to go. What happens when you're playing something and just I didn't mean for that to come out. How do you, and you have to make on the spot mental adjustments.

How do you deal with that? When it's just not going right.

Ideally I invest deeper in the music. If something doesn't go right, that. That's going to happen sometimes, and but I'm inwardly focused or, worried about how I'm being seen, if it's about me, then it can spiral, then it could be harder to recover.

If it's about the music and if I'm invested in that, communicating the story. Then it's just a blip and you stick with the story and no one notices it happens in real time, and no, no one dies. It's not surgery.

Yeah, we're not in court. We're not in surgery.

It's just music. We're just playing instruments.

And I think that one of the things that I have, I always really appreciated as a student and I have to remember and also remind my students is that people are coming to live music to see live music. And if you want a perfect, clean recording of something, then you can access that at home,

but

In a live performance.

There's sort of the expectation that it's going to be somewhat flawed because with flaws come character, come personality, come an individuality of that moment in time. And certainly, when you're playing with an orchestra, there are variables there. There's this, it can feel like things are shifting.

Sometimes it's every performance is going to be slightly different. The cue that you get from the conductor, the temperature on stage, the where the pitch is at that moment. What happened in the rhythm right before your entrance. All of these things could Possibly cause, you to crack a note or to for it to just feel different or to come out Just even if you don't miss but it just wasn't exactly the way you wanted it to come out That's just that's part of live performance.

And I think that's also the joy of and, being a part of, as an audience observing live performance. And so if you embrace that, then you go for it. I remember a colleague of mine in the Houston symphony, Bob Walp, he said, before I went and played a recital, I think he said, okay, Mike, I want you to go out on the thin ice.

Because, if you stay close to the shore, if you close to land where it's safe then you're actually withholding something that you could be offering to the audience. But if you go out there and really put take a risk then you are, offering something special and and so I've looked at it a little bit differently since then and thinking about, really having something to offer with this sort of palms open, not something to prove fists.

Okay.

Okay. So you go out there, you take a risk, and it stretches you, and reveals maybe something that you didn't know you had.

Maybe. And you've trained so that, usually it isn't so much of a risk. I don't go out and try to play softer or louder than I ever play. I play within what I know is possible.

But there's still that tension. Feeling of safety that we feel of like pulling it in and not going to the extremes and the pittsburgh symphony is known for its extremes We play incredibly loudly and incredibly softly. And and so that challenges me to continue that legacy.

You also mentioned consistency, and I want to get your thoughts on what exactly you meant by that. I assume it has something to do with the quality of your sound your ability to more or less match your performance from one day to the, to another. It's interesting because I was just doing some master classes at a high school this morning here in Minnesota and Band director asked me a question because he wanted me to educate the kids He said how do you play consistently and I was speaking off the cuff.

I said, there's so many variables. It's a very physical instrument if you have a fight with your spouse the night before a big performance, it's definitely going to affect how you go about your performance the next day. If you don't eat well, if you don't get enough sleep, there's so many things that go into that.

And that, that was my answer just thinking right off the top of my head, but I'd like to hear from you what do you mean by consistency? Consistency. And. How do we, my question is, how do we be as consistent as possible?

Yeah, I think what I mean is a couple things. On the job, you might call it reliability.

Reliability.

And so being able to deliver, When it counts and consistently. And yeah, that means I think a deep understanding of what's going on. And again, a deep connection with the music so that what you're hearing matches what you need to come out of the bell and that you're, technique.

Is able to deliver that. So then it's also just execution. So I guess, in a, in terms of I probably, when I said consistency and nerves were an issue what I meant was just being able to play whatever passage I was asked to without missing a bunch of notes.

Okay.

And so that accuracy or that execution of it.

Okay. meant that I think for me as a younger student, it just meant prioritizing it. It just meant like taking it seriously that, Oh, you mean, even if I have a better sound and I have a little more style and more pizzazz in my playing, but I miss five of the 18 notes, you mean they're all going to vote for the other person?

Not me, even though I had the better sound. I guess I better work on, Not missing all those notes. And so that, that came down to how I prepared and how I practiced. And so that played very much into my eventual professional orchestra audition preparation, which was a organized plan to.

build consistency and reliability in my execution of all the excerpts. I would tell anyone that you study the excerpts, you study the score, you study the entire piece, you listen to a gazillion recordings. You learn all of the technique and fundamentals that are necessary. So that when you play anything, you're just going to sound easy and good.

And then you're playing in an appropriate style, appropriate tempo, and the articulation is the right style for the particular excerpt. All that stuff matters. And then you learn. How to audition, which is to, draw random numbers out of a hat and say, okay, I'm going to play these seven excerpts in this random order now.

And I need to be able to jump from, an excerpt of Debussy that's light and French and articulated to something that's on the German rotary trumpet. That's soft and very static and then move on to a Mahler excerpt that's very expressive and mournful.

It's just something else. And all the while, so expressing all those things. And all the while doing it, and actually being able to deliver what it is that you, you plan to say. David Hickman recommended that I number all the excerpts in a given list for an audition, because when you are.

Invited to an audition, then you're given a list of orchestral excerpts to prepare, and there might be 35 excerpts. So you number them 1 to 35, and then the goal was to play each one of them several times in a row, record it, listen back, evaluate it. Score it out of 10 and 10 was just like absolutely everything was perfect Just what I wanted to say 9 was like, yeah, there was a little tiny Thing there out of tune maybe a small Nick that only I would notice 8 is yeah They would definitely notice that split note 7 6 and so on right and the goal was to have all the excerpts consistently at a 10.

And so I had a big whiteboard and divided into columns and charted the excerpts and started to, try to move the excerpts from the right hand side where they were lower numbers to the left hand side where they were. And putting myself through that process especially recording and listening back, then you're really hearing what's coming out the bell and you're listening and able to be very critical when you're listening and you're able to separate that from when you're performing.

This was, this, these were the hats that Arnold Jacobs talked about, which was the performer hat and the teacher hat. And so when you're wearing the performer hat, you're not wearing the teacher hat. You're not evaluating. You're not listening in the same way for feedback. You're not paying attention to the sensory input.

You're just delivering. You're just issuing statements. And then when you put on the teacher hat, you're analyzing or critiquing. It's as if it's someone else. And you're the, more of the observer. And so then you put on the teacher hat when you listen back to the performance. Playback, evaluate critique, put the performer head back on and try it again.

And so that, that process really refined my playing and helped me to be able to trust myself when it came time for the audition.

That is it's such a great explanation of it. Thank you for sharing your process. Sure. And that would, You have a huge whiteboard and you're saying like this expert excerpt was a five and then it's a six this day and that's a 6.2 the next day.

Yep, that's right. And the goal is to get it all the way up to 10.

That's right. All of them.

Did. They all get up to 10.

Nope, never.

But in so doing, you become familiar with it.

Yeah. They all, they, they got close.

Okay.

But I was being so picky.

Yeah.

And I was requiring myself to do it not just once, but multiple times and take the average.

Take the average. That's what you call preparation.

It's extreme. And I think that was clearly evident in who did well at our audition that we just had.

There was no doubt that those players who did very well at the audition and then the eventual finalists, and we had a, what's called a super final round where two finalists were continued on to an extra day of auditions where the two of them played more excerpts. And then the winner. It came down, I think, to preparation.

There's no doubt in my mind that the person who won prepared more than anyone else.

I want to hear we timed this interview because we timed it to be after this audition process took place. That's a very extensive process. Tell us, tell tell us about you're listening on, behind a screen, so you can't see who's playing.

Tell us what you hear because from what I've heard and I've only I've done a couple of auditions in my life So it's nothing that I'm super familiar with but I've heard that within seconds this person is going to advance. This person doesn't have it Is that the case within less two or three bars of them playing?

I would say yeah. Yeah, really And I would say it's not necessarily. Yeah, this person is going to advance. It's yeah I want to continue hearing more from this person Or I've basically written this person off. And very occasionally, maybe someone just has a rough go to start out. And I would take copious notes and I and if it really sounded like nerves, I would write that.

Because there's a, you can hear a tentative quality or something really weird happen, something dramatically out of tune or a wildly missed note or some, an extra breath that someone wouldn't need or something kind of shaky sounding and, in their tone. And that doesn't always happen at the beginning, it might happen later in the round.

You can start to hear nerves and I, Look, I'm, I was listening for great playing and not just perfect composure and, a lack of any sort of nerves. If someone had a problem with something and I was interested in what they were doing, I always ask them. To do it again. I'm gonna ask for something different.

But it's a sign of interest If a committee asks for a candidate to repeat something,

right?

We don't like what we're hearing Why would we waste our time hearing them do more? And I think that the most important thing is just sound just a great Beautiful, resonant, ringing, lively, free, captivating sound.

And if you've got a, as Barbara Butler says, a sound to die for, then people are going to want to hear more. It just, it's alluring makes you look up and say, wow, what is that? And that's. That was very exciting to hear. We heard lots of great sounds.

So what is it about the players that, within just a few seconds, you know this, I don't want to hear any more of this.

What is it about? Is it their tone? Is it their personality? Yeah, it's their sound and their

articulation. Articulation? Because that's the presentation of the sound. So it's very hard to distinguish sound and articulation. A sound that is, has a thuddy articulation or a crass articulation, an articulation that breaks up, an articulation that's separate from the sound to ah, then it.

The ah is still distorted because of that. And the idea is that you're presenting, beautiful open ringing vowels with clarity and not disturbance. And that's fundamental aspect of great clear. projecting articulation and sound was apparent right from the get go.

So for our first round of the audition the first excerpt I think was the Leonor fanfare. Yes. The Leonor number two in E flat. Yeah, no, let's see. I'm remembering that was the second excerpt. The first excerpt was Pictures Promenade. And I was very mindful of the order of things because I wanted to set people up to play well.

It's already hard enough to walk out in an unfamiliar environment and play, without any warm up notes. I think there was one person ever who played any warm up notes through the whole audition. The basic expectation is that you walk out, you sit down, You haven't even played in this room yet.

And then you just play. And so I wouldn't want the first thing to be something that's jarring or especially difficult. So we might call Pictures Promenade a warmup excerpt. Now, of course, we're immediately evaluating not like to try to cut someone off, haha. We get to, not listen anymore.

That's not the point at all. We're, excited to hear great playing and Pictures Promenade shows so many things. It shows lyricism. It shows how you connect from note to note. It shows your intonation and your rhythm and your phrasing and, your arc and connection of sound between low to high.

It shows your leadership and your personality. And Players who played note perfect, in tune, in time, didn't phrase were very uninteresting to the committee. Now we weren't discussing after each player, but we would discuss generally, during lunch or bathroom breaks and just just Oh, why won't anyone play a phrase on that?

And and 2nd excerpt. And just hearing I don't have perfect pitch, so I don't know where I am right now,

but

that, that clarity was so important and really rarely accomplished.

The clarity and the confidence. The clarity

of articulation was the, I would say, deciding factor for a vast majority of the people auditioning.

Yeah.

So it's not necessarily playing perfectly in time.

And that's a free excerpt, there's that, that has built in rubato in it.

But I've heard that it's if you don't play extremely, like on, with exact precision, that's a deal breaker. But I'm hearing from you, that's not necessarily a deal breaker if you're playing more musically.

Then it, it might be a bit forgivable if it's slightly off the beat. Am I understanding?

I think there's the basic expectation that you have to have a great sound, have great rhythm, great time, great intonation. And if you have, those sort of musical qualities. that's going to set you up well.

And what I think I'm talking about is a little bit more of a technical trumpet quality, which is great sound and great articulation. And that was lacking.

Yeah. Cause I'm sure that you've had, you had some really accomplished players show up for this audition.

Yeah. I think that again, I talked about that element of safety that we sometimes fall back into and I think it can be safer to play, like easing into the notes a little bit,

y'all

finding the note, rather than,

duh,

just like right there.

out of the gate and learning how to do that in a way where it comes across as clear and full and ringing and not breaking up, not brittle in a big hall so that it sounds great out in the hall. That's not something I think that's a distinguishing factor between the real greats.

And I, this is true, I think among professionals too, the, but Hersteth, for example, many would claim as, one of, if not the greatest orchestral principal trumpet player to have lived, and what distinguishes him more than anything else, his articulation front, that clarity, that immediacy of sound that just is.

You know right there

in your face

You know it had a variety of color because it's our main expressive tool. It's our text but it's also it was

There was a presence with his sound There was a presence, that I think is what I meant. In your face is a little more crass.

Yeah, exactly. Too crass. Presence. Presence and immediacy. Immediacy. I like that. Immediate presence in the sound. Yes. We're getting close to our time that we have to part ways, but I think it I keep feeling the need to ask, can we get some clarity on what you mean? Just further clarity on what you've already shared on articulation.

And can you give just Some very brief comments on how to improve our articulation so that we can, if we've perhaps not done well in an orchestral audition and we don't want to repeat, we want to have a better result for the next time we go about it just, I guess I just want more clarification on the meaning of articulation and how to go about producing what someone in your position as an audition committee member should be doing.

would be looking for.

I think, again, look at articulation as speech, as language, and so it is an expressive tool. So while I'm saying, clarity and immediacy Of, it is important the way that we would articulate each excerpt would be different. That's the main difference between playing the Brahms academic festival literature on rotary trumpet and more of a dog kind of articulation versus a land or fanfare that kind of clarity to something, you know more hushed and immediate, that kind of thing from the WC or multiple articulation having, our K tongue being identical to our T tongue if we're going to call it T and K.

And so really listening to the great masters of articulation in maybe not just on the trumpet either, listen to the singers and the ones with great diction and emulate that in our playing, record yourself from a great distance and listen back. Does it sound wah, wah, or is it clear?

Can you understand the text? And so I think that's that's an important thing to start thinking about is, can you understand me play for someone else? But, I think Tom Stevens would do this, he'd play for his wife, but his wife would be in the other room intentionally, so that, does it sound good through the wall?

And remember when we play offstage fanfares like the Leonor, It's from offstage. It has to be clear through a wall. And so it doesn't mean louder. It just means neater, cleaner really tidy playing. And and then that combined with qualities of sound thinking in terms of colors and density and size.

And so when we're thinking of a full, rich, orchestral ringing sound. That's, got a great color spectrum to it. That's really a full, complete sound. And we want to start that full, complete sound with firm articulation. DA is going to be like what it sounds like, not TA. So I think thinking of a A weighty, DAW tongue

Can help with getting that consistent and clear and full so that the tongue sound isn't smaller than the tone sound.

The tongue sound is not smaller than the tone sound.

Right.

I like that. We certainly don't have time to, there'd be many sessions needed to do justice on how to do the proper articulations, but I, and I guess I'm just I always hear the word articulation. I always think of double tonguing and triple tonguing.

I think I just, For me personally, I just always think about the technical aspects of how to use the tongue, but you The body

will figure out what it needs to do in order to create what it is in our imagination. And so the great limiter is our imagination. But hearing you Starting with the, form of how we're doing it then we are disconnected from, the product.

And hearing you explain that way made me think of articulation more as you're giving a speech, you're articul, you're an articulate person,

and thus we have variety in our articulation itself. And inflection, that's an important word with articulation. If you're playing shaharazad and you have, then. Each one of those notes might be clear enough to be enunciated, but there's going to be inflection in how the notes are grouped.

And

I'm not playing da! I'm playing dum da dum da! So there's a a way that those are shaped that's gonna be nuanced and have like I said, inflection.

And do you mind Is it okay to share the name of the person who won the audition?

Yeah Conrad Jones was the winner of the audition. So he's was principal in the Indianapolis Symphony and just played a stellar round. His rounds of auditions were all stellar.

Congratulations to Mr. Jones for his success.

Yeah. And congratulations to you, Micah, for your success. You've done well. And you have a scar tissue to prove it in your, probably in your mind and in your psyche. You can't get to a position like that without taking your lumps and you have. And I appreciate that. And you've been very open, very generous with your time and your knowledge.

And your website is it michawilkinson. com?

Yeah, that's it. Yeah. Micah. I need to update it. It was a pandemic project. My wife made it for me. And and then it's sat there ever since. Okay.

Yeah. That's the, sounds like a typical musician's website, but that's okay. So Micah Wilkinson.

com. Send him an email. That's how I got in touch with him. Yeah. So that at least the email function does work. So we know that. The

contact does work, yes.

So I'm so glad this has worked out and that we had this chance to. Sit down and pick your brain a little bit about auditions. I hope that you folks who have been listening in have gained something.

At the very least, you know at least a little bit about how to go about preparing for your auditions so that your nerves aren't as much of an issue as they have been. That's just my wish for this podcast is that, you can go into by all accounts, a very nerve wracking situation and come out of it feeling proud of yourself.

If that happens for one person, then this podcast has served its purpose. So Micah, it's been a pleasure. And if the stars align, we can do a round two. I'm certainly game for it. But until then, I wish you farewell and best wishes for you.

Thanks. It was great to meet you and great to talk to you.