Purple Haze
You can't always get what you want
By Lauren Bagian

Nov. 5, 2009

I found myself sitting against the wall outside Audition Room 1 in a line of 30 nervous first sopranos on Saturday, Oct. 31. These girls chattered on fretfully, discussing what their voice teachers told them to do at the octave jump or humming along with their music as they practiced in a type of musical exam cramming. I simply sat there and absorbed all of their fear, excitement and apprehension over entering that room.

We had a right to be overflowing with that cocktail of emotions--25 first sopranos would be chosen from a total 110 talented singers to perform as part of the District VII Chorus. This chosen number was the same for every voice part (soprano 1/2, alto 1/2, tenor 1/2, and bass 1/2). However, the total number auditioning fluctuated slightly. Despite the unfavorable odds, Northern senior Olivia Schreiber and junior Jack Krimmel will both be returning to the District VII Chorus for the second year in a row. Congratulations and good luck at the festival in January!

As I sat outside that audition room with the group of anxious first sopranos, I wondered what brought us all here. The music was extremely difficult, each of the three audition pieces were in Latin and each had meter changes, constantly moving dynamics and key changes throughout. The audition process was positively frightening as each hopeful performer sang each song to the back of two judges’ heads who listened and then scored the singer in categories such as musicality, rhythmic accuracy, intonation, melodic accuracy and more. Then there was the waiting: waiting to audition, waiting for every person on each voice part to audition until the scores were checked and waiting for the final announcement of who made it into the chorus.

Why would over 650 high school students want to go through all of this torture? Do we simply love abuse? I know it sounds crazy, but this whole extravaganza was really a positive thing, even for the 550 or more “rejected” students. The lengthy audition process taught everyone involved how to properly prepare for such auditions, like those that are required for music majors entering college. Also, probably the most important lesson that could come out of something like this, we all discovered how this little rejection was not the end of the world by any stretch.

Are the students who didn’t make it to the District VII Chorus bad singers? Absolutely not! There are many factors that go into such decisions and we cannot control all of them. Things will not always go the way we want or the way we plan. To quote the Rolling Stones, “you can’t always get what you want,” and no truer statement has ever been spoken, in my humble opinion. However, we must recognize that we will always end up where we are meant to be and that we must take heart that the experience was much more beneficial to our lives than the award. Besides, there will always be other auditions.