Auditioning ensembles - R. Sparks, D. Warland

I really enjoy reading insights and methods from other musicians, especially conductors and composers. Richard Sparks has been quite prolific lately and has created three excellent posts about auditioning. I've been thinking about what he's said over the past several days as I contemplate auditioning my group soon.

Here are links to the three posts:

Auditioning 1
Auditioning 2
Auditioning 3

Here are some thoughts from him:

Sightreading:

I've always included some sight-reading (the level varies, according to the choir), but I also know that this is something that makes many singers very nervous--and they don't show what they can really do. And it's also not the kind of sight-reading one does in a choral situation. Further, it doesn’t say how motivated the singer will be to learn music. I've had some singers who aren’t terrific sight-readers, but will do whatever is necessary to be prepared (and the opposite--singers who read quite well, but aren't willing to do any work outside of rehearsal, even if they can’t get a particular passage). You can only know this in returning singers, since you've had the experience of working with them.

Tonal memory:

Consequently, I've also often done tonal memory exercises (playing simple patterns that the singer repeats by ear, then gradually getting more difficult). Sometimes, especially with the students at PLU, this told me a lot about how quick the singer's ear is and more about how quickly they might learn. When I watched Dale Warland do his auditions, he usually played examples at different speeds, dynamics and articulations, to see if the singer picks up on those details as well as pitch and rhythm.

Anonymity:

After introducing the process, I’d turn my back to the singers and call out numbers for particular singers. Of course, I could identify some singers’ voices right away, but I didn’t focus on guessing—simply on listening to the voice. I think new singers liked this “anonymity,” and later was sometimes genuinely surprised by the results as I ranked the singers.