Orchestra auditions: Success strategies

Jorja Fleezanis, former concertmaster, Minnesota Orchestra

Teaches at Indiana University Jacobs School of Music

I always tell my students to work from a score when studying an excerpt so they have a complete sense of the rhythmic texture, who is doubling them or whether it’s a solo line. I also ask them to listen to three or four recordings of the work and to play along with them. Some students won’t have played these pieces before, so it can’t hurt to visualise themselves in an orchestral setting. I advise students to work fairly religiously with a metronome. You have to be 100 per cent confident that you can hold the tempo and you must build inner discipline.