Posted by M.James on February 28, 2002 at 21:10:34:
In Reply to: Re: BSO Rejection - Now what? posted by Rod Mathews on February 28, 2002 at 20:03:54:
I agree with Rod about hiring the person they wanted in the first place. This seems to be the same with many auditions. I've heard stories that service bands are also not immune to this, but politics will always exist. I guess the thing that bothers me the most about Boston is that there is no way that NONE of the people they heard last time were deemed worthy to fill the position. Having heard several of the tubists on the previous list myself, I'm sure that they were more than qualified for the job. As Rod has pointed out, it is nowhere written in stone that the orchestra must provide auditions, but if they're going to go ahead and hire who they wanted to begin with, then don't make many qualified and hard-working musicians take the time and money to take the audition and then announce that "no one was qualified" and hire their pre-chosen player. It's almost considered conventional wisdom now that no one actually "wins" a major orchestral brass job anymore. To me, this is exercising pure self-importance, and is an alarming and unnecessary trend that has developed lately. Of course, it is possible that many great players may show up and have bad auditions, but I doubt that this explains all of these recent occurences.
p.s. I might be wrong : )