today i’m sharing a crazy audition win story with you.
in 2019, a cellist named maria reached out to me about her audition struggles. on paper, she was the “worst audition candidate ever” (her words). she had 2 small children, a full-time teaching job, and hadn’t taken an audition in 4 years.
she was also unable to leave parma, italy, so the only orchestra job she could win would be with the arturo toscanini philharmonic.
in addition to these limitations, she had her own personal struggles with auditions. she wasn’t confident in her playing, she would lose focus, and she couldn’t trust herself to perform the way she knew she could. how would she ever win an audition and join an orchestra?
well, an audition opened up in 2022. she enrolled in my course. she made 3 major changes to her audition preparation process:
change #1: instead of doing slow practice, she worked on her repertoire using ROAM.
change #2: instead of working through the whole list every day, she dove deep on one or two excerpts per day, resulting in radical improvement to those excerpts.
change #3: instead of doing just 4 or 5 mock auditions, she cranked up the intensity and did 30 mocks for all different people.
it was truly transformative. 3 months later she won the job. it was the only job that she could have won based on her life situation, and she did it.
if she can do it with 2 small children and other obstacles, so can you.
“anyone can win an audition. it’s very important that you believe that anyone can win an audition from the very start… this really helped me to build courage. like a muscle, you can train courage. i hadn’t taken auditions in a very long time, i had a non-performing job for a long time, i’m older than forty… if i did it, anyone can.” - maria cristina mazza
what are the changes you’ll need to make to win your dream job?
i believe that with the right mindset and audition preparation process, anyone can win an orchestra audition. my students have proven that to me time and time again.
i interviewed maria and made a podcast about it.
today's episode is called how “the worst candidate ever” won her dream job.
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