#209: Why You Play Worse in Auditions Than in Practice | Tessa Vermeulen

If you're looking to understand what goes in to winning an orchestral audition, download our FREE winning auditions workbook! http://www.goldmethod.us/auditions What if the way you think about orchestral auditions is the reason you play worse in them? Tessa Vermeulen, second/assistant principal flute of the Alabama Symphony Orchestra, joins Ryan Beach and Kathleen Costello to talk about audition preparation from the inside. Tessa trained at Carnegie Mellon and Juilliard and won her Alabama Symphony job while still finishing her master’s. She was technically and musically prepared long before she started working with us. What she wanted was consistency: a way to stay mentally present on stage no matter what happened that day. In this episode she talks about: Why an orchestral audition isn’t an exam, and what changes in your playing when you stop treating it like one Why the purpose of practice isn’t to prevent mistakes, but to trust yourself to come back when one happens How she practiced specific points in her excerpts to bring her attention back to the present What happened when she cut her finger days before an audition Why her goal for her most recent audition was to “not try,” and why she counts it as a big moment even though she didn’t advance Why it’s okay for some parts of your preparation to feel easy If you take orchestral auditions on flute or any other instrument, and you play better in the practice room than you do behind the screen, this conversation is for you. Connect with Tessa https://www.thethinkingflutist.com/ Support the show