I'm Adam Manus, and I'm Peter Martin, and you're listening to the You'll Hear It podcast. Today, we're going to tell you how to

nail an audition. Like with a hammer? That's, that's it. Use a hammer, nail it, piece, and you're out.

Sorry, that's, that's not a very inspired pun at all. It's pretty good.

But we are inspired for this subject because we've been recording with Sean Jones the last few days here at Open Studios.

Sean James, great trumpeter and professor of jazz, the head of the new Peabody Jazz Institute in Baltimore, and someone who has a lot of information and knowledge about not only how to do an audition from the player's standpoint, but from the adjudicator standpoint as well. He has a lot of experience. And so just a little disclaimer here, we're going to steal a lot of these from Sean, because we learned a lot from him, right? Hope you like it, Sean. Yeah. But you've done a lot of this too, though. You've donejudicating. I've done a little bit, but judging an audition, you actually learn a lot about how to nail an audition, because you spend all day, like, you know, getting to see how people present themselves, and then you get very strong opinions about how you want it to happen. Yeah, yeah, I think that we've learned more from the adjudicator standpoint about how to actually do an audition than in doing. I mean, I've done a fair number of auditions, but it's been years since I've had to do one or been invited to do one. But so I actually don't even have a lot of experience doing that, but I've seen a lot of them. And I wish I knew back then when I was doing my little Juilliard audition and I was terrified

and sweating, I wish I understood about the process like I do now and had that information.

So hopefully for those of you that are going into an audition situation, and I mean, look,

this could be anything from auditioning when you're in high school or younger for a different

orchestra or for a jazz experience or jazz band or something.

Yeah.

To, of course, you know, the big ones are usually the conservatory entrance auditions.

Yeah.

But then, I mean, you know, people are called to do auditions for gigs all the time as professionals.

That's right.

Just like with actors, you'd be surprised that the A-list

Hollywood actors that still have to do some kind of audition or reading or whatever they call it.

That's right. So it's a great skill to have. So Adam, why don't you kick it off? What do you think is the

most important thing about it? Well, the most important thing with an audition is to be prepared.

Have all your materials prepared. Practice what the audition

guidelines tell you exactly to practice. And, you know, be ready to play. I mean, there's only so much

preparation you can do to be a better player in two months or whatever. But you should be, you know, if you're going to

audition for anything, you should be at the top of your game. You should spend all your energy

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