The Wanda L. Bass School of Music moved all auditions for the music theater and vocal performance programs online.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, yearly auditions for the Wanda L. Bass vocal programs are occurring digitally. More information on the audition process can be found on the School of Music website.
Jordyn Younger, vocal performance/music theater senior, is the National Live Auditions coordinator for the School of Music. She is serving her second year in the position but had to reimagine her role when the university moved all national auditions online.
“Basically, I was a part of planning our audition process this year, which was a huge challenge at first because we wanted to make sure that were still providing a similar experience to the prospectives this year as any other class would get,” Younger said.
Younger said the administration worked to build the entire framework of the audition around the Acceptd website, which is used for many university performance programs. Professors and adjudicators reviewed auditions on the site and offered interviews based on those. Younger said the interviews, hosted by Dr. David Herendeen, director of opera and music theater, and Karen Miller, assistant director of opera and music theater, help the faculty get to know the prospective students personally. She said the callback interviews were 15 minutes long and enabled prospectives to ask questions.
Younger said she and other student ambassadors for the school simultaneously hosted Q&A sessions in breakout rooms for the prospective students to join before or after their interviews. Younger said the main purpose of the breakout rooms was to give a sense of the on-campus culture to students who may have never visited campus.
“I’m always really proud of all the ambassadors of the School of Music. They all did such a wonderful job embodying the student culture of OCU,” Younger said. “We just really felt confident in being able to talk about our school in a way that was inviting and welcoming and enthusiastic.”
Karen Miller, assistant director of opera and music theater, said changing the format for auditions gave the faculty an opportunity to adjust the requirements for auditions, to help ease both the time needed for adjudication and allow prospective students more flexibility.
“We’ve actually standardized what we were asking for musical theater students to do as far as cuts,” Miller said. “When we’re on campus, we have people sing complete songs and prepare complete songs. That is not necessarily standard for programs.”
Miller said the only special piece of material they continue to require is an art song for the voice faculty to analyze. The requirements for the art song selection were also further specified for this year’s audition.
“We’ve given more resources in terms of what constitutes an art song. We’ve included folk songs, gospel and given some clear definition that it doesn’t have to be in a foreign language,” Miller said.
Miller said the vocal performance audition stayed consistent with previous years.
She said the largest addition from previous years in the inclusion of a ‘wild card’ video.
“It is just any special skill. You can talk to us about something that you’re passionate about, and basically, you can do anything,” Miller said. “It’s a way for us to learn more about their personality and their other interests as a whole person.”
Miller said the interviews with the directors and wild card videos are elements which the faculty is interested in keeping for the future.
“Online auditions are something we have had in many years, but the addition of those elements lessens the feeling that it is a ‘less-than’ audition” Miller said. “We want people who can’t come to campus to feel just as welcome and just as heard as the people who choose to come to campus, or are financially able to come to campus, because we know there are a lot of people that that’s just not a possibility for.”
Dr. Catherine McDaniel, assistant professor of voice, was one of the voice professors adjudicating video auditions before the interviews. She said working exclusively through Acceptd helped the faculty feel more closely connected than in an in-person audition day.
“We were able to work closer with the directors than we have in the past. Like every year, they are signing off on the monologues and we are signing off on the singing, but when it’s all on the same Acceptd page, we can all share comments,” McDaniel said.
She said she is looking forward to returning to in-person auditions for the sake of connecting to the students, but she is proud of the work the university has done to streamline the process for students and faculty.
“I think it has just been so great,” McDaniel said. “I am continually proud of the Bass School of Music for all the rallying that everyone has done this year to make this year work and to make something even better than normal.”
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