The Audition Fiasco

The post-disaster briefing composed in the lobby of the Rochester Crowne Plaza Hotel

Mar 2, 2007 4:29 PM

Hello all

For those of you that have been tracking the preparations for my latest round of grad school auditions (this time only one audition), I wanted to let you know that as of approximately 60 minutes ago, I am done with my audition, thus concluding a chapter of my life that has ended in what can only be described as one of the most unbelievably intense disaster recovery efforts that I have ever experienced.

We begin with my flight from Seattle to Chicago being delayed about 3 hours, thus causing me to miss my first possible connecting flight from Chicago to Rochester by a good solid hour. Not a good start, but nothing compared to the crapstorm to come. I arrive in Chicago to Arrival/Departure boards with nearly solid yellow "Cancelled" next to the vast majority of flights out of Chicago. By now it is 3:00 in the afternoon, and I was supposed to be on the 1:30 flight to Rochester, getting into town in the early afternoon, thus leaving me lots of time to play a bit, shower, and get a good nights sleep. But hope springs eternal - there are still two flights tonight going where I need to go. After an hour wait, during which I managed to make myself sick snarfing down an enormous Cinnabon too fast, the first flight is canceled, to the groans and profuse swearing of me and my fellow travelers. We all make a beeline for the dreaded red "rebooking" phones, and I manage to finagle a spot on the last flight to Rochester of the day, leaving in two hours.

I wander aimlessly for yet another two hours, and after finishing the book that was supposed to last me another couple of weeks of reading, I head back to the gate to find the ominous but by now predictable yellow "canceled" that the gate agent had neglected to announce, thus further enraging me and my fellow travelers. So, that's it for the night. No more flights to Rochester or anywhere even near it.

I head to the nearest hotel, which is, of course, due to the crappy weather, booked solid (impressive, considering the ridiculously high room rates...) I head out to the front counter after spending more time on the red rebooking phone, and somehow manage to book a seat on the first flight out in the morning after being told by the ticket agents on the phone only minutes before that the flight was full. Gotta love electronic check in! I finally get a return call from someone at the Eastman admissions office after leaving them a message saying there's no way in heck that I'm going to be there for the beginning of the day tomorrow.

I head back to the depths of the G concourse at Chicago O Hare airport, and after walking around in shock for a while, find a relatively quiet spot, and engage in the time-honored tradition of trying to sleep in a bright, freezing, noisy airport, complete with blaring announcements every 2 minutes about the national terrorism threat level being raised to "Orange" (run away!!!) Thankfully, being the semi-savvy airline traveler that I am, I came prepared with ear plugs and a hat that blocks light very well when pulled down over the eyes and used as a sleep mask. Sleep commences, interrupted by the occasional janitor loudly emptying garbage cans nearby.

I wake to freezing cold air finding me from an open door with lots of baggage workers trucking by me at 4:30 am, and decide to go stake out a spot by the gate that my 9:25 am flight is supposed to depart from. Keep in mind that I was supposed to be AT EASTMAN at 9:00 am for the beginning of the audition day convocation, where they talk about the school, the audition day, and hand out schedules. Not gonna happen. After much anxiety and much CNN watching, our flight finally leaves. I was told by the gate agent that I talked the night before that my cello would be on that first flight to Rochester even if I wasn't on it, so it seemed logical to think that since I was, in fact, on the flight, that my cello would most definitely be on it as well. Hmm. In any case, my flight ends up leaving with me on it, and how I got an actual seat is still a mystery to me, since the gate agents all swore up and down that the earliest available spot for me to get to Rochester was today at 4:00 pm

Upon my arrival in Rochester, the nightmare continues, and I discover to my extreme horror that my cello has not accompanied me, meaning that is floating around in the freezing hell that is the O'Hare luggage department. The fact that I need to play it in approximately 3 hours notwithstanding, the simple idea that it's lost in the baggage area, in the cold, being tossed about by knuckle-dragging, poo-tossing baggage monkeys who wouldn't know an expensive string instrument if it hit them in the face, is horrifying enough in and of itself. So, after several simultaneous minor heart attacks, I find the shuttle to my hotel, and proceed to shower, shave and iron my clothes faster than I ever thought possible. I honestly don't think I could have done it any faster if there had been a gun to my head.

I walk to the Eastman Admissions department, who have already been informed that I will be late, and that I will be severely lacking in the cello-to-play-on department. They talk to the cello professors who I was supposed to audition for at 12:00 noon (It's now 3:30 pm) and I am conveniently outfitted with a very nice cello, which, despite it's excellent quality, is still most definitely not the cello that I have been playing on for the last 2 years.

After getting an excellent, rather unexpected warm-up, I play an audition that was described by Alan Harris, the professor that I want to study with, as "making lemonade out of lemons". During the audition, I begin with numerous strange fingers-going-the-wrong-way incidents but manage to pull together a respectable performance of the Allemande from the 6th Bach Suite, play a good-to-excellent rendition of the Bach Courante, and then proceed to crash head-first into a very solid brick wall when I attempt the first movement of the Dvorak concerto, beginning with some decidedly un-cello like sounds that could have been mistaken for a duck being strangled, and can probably be attributed to my lack of sleep, frazzled state of mind, and just maybe the fact that I am playing on a completely unfamiliar cello. Coincidentally, my sub-conscience picks this particular piece to decide that I am now unable to play the shifts that I have worked so hard on over the past 6 months. I finish with my ludicrously hard etude, which goes reasonably well, but still contains many mini-train wreck moments that are both obvious and infuriating.

I am still not entirely pleased with my performance, even considering the circumstances, but one inevitable fact that is true, regardless of everything that has happened -

I am

DONE.

And now, I am going to go call American Airlines, try to find Trinity (my cello), and then watch TV, get a large quantity of food via room service (I just realized the only thing I've had to eat yet today is a single orange), and sleep for 16 hours straight. My flight tomorrow, if it ends up leaving at all, is scheduled to head to Chicago at 4:30 in the afternoon, so I've got lots of time to do Absolutely Nothing all morning.

And that, folks, concludes the monumental clusterf@#k that was my audition.
(pardon my french, for those of you with sensitive ears)

Don't check your precious cellos as baggage on American Airlines flights.