Junior year high school is when I first auditioned and I didn't make it. I didn't make it in that year.

You have to be really, really an excellent player, very talented player, and I wasn't at the level.

Otto Carrillo plays French Horn in the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. He's been with the

orchestra for more than 20 years. His parents who immigrated from Guatemala were big classical

music lovers, and they handed him his first French horn when he was nine. But he was talking

about his experience as a teenager when he tried out for the Chicago Youth Symphony Orchestra.

It's a selective music program, actually one of the top ones in the country, that offers

advanced music instruction for students who want the experience of playing in a full orchestra.

I remember the first time I auditioned the orchestral excerpts that were required of me.

I didn't know them that well, so there was no mystery why I didn't get in.

He tried out first as a junior, but he didn't make it. Then he tried out again as a senior.

This time I felt like I did well.

Now Carrillo's at the top of his profession.

So why are we talking about him blowing an audition three decades ago?

Well, because Curious City got a question from listener Rochelle Zappia,

who wanted to know what it was like to be in a youth orchestra.

Well, I never had formal music lessons, partly because I have a phone-fine-motor coordination challenge.

Rochelle has cerebral palsy, which, as she says, really affects her fine motor coordination,

so she wasn't able to play an instrument at the level

required for an orchestra. But her father played clarinet professionally, and as a child, her mother

taught her how to position her fingers over the piano keys. And throughout my childhood and

adolescents, I was always sort of figuring out how to play songs.

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