A sigh of relief slips out of every senior’s lips as soon as the submit button is pressed. At that moment, for that one college application, they are all done. But not all seniors are that lucky.
This morning, senior Ifu Kubo and I will be doing our first of many auditions to earn acceptances to music colleges. Like many of our peers, we have filled out the application and submitted it, but unlike our peers, there was no sigh of relief.
That was just the beginning, the easy part. What followed was hours of preparation, practice, and performance, and now the time has come for our first audition.
“I’m really excited to continue my music life,” Ifu said, “but it always makes me nervous doing auditions to follow my dream.”
Our first audition is for the Berklee College of Music — at noon for Ifu and 2:15 pm for me — at a Burbank music studio. We begin with warm-ups, and then comes an audition which consists of improvisation, ear-training, sight reading, and a prepared piece. Each performer has to choose a principal instrument.
For me, my instrument is my voice. Ifu will be on piano.
The performance piece is a very important part of the audition. Berklee highly encourages its applicants to choose a song they feel most comfortable with, a song that they know. This afternoon I will perform “One and Only” by Adele, singing to a piano track generously put together by Lower Campus music teacher Andy Street, whose help in all aspects of my music career has been invaluable. Wish me luck!
At least I won’t be alone, as my good friend and future classmate (fingers crossed!) Ifu will be right there with me. For the past two weeks, Ifu and I have been working hard day and night in preparation. Ifu will perform “Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence” by Ryuichi Sakamoto. When Ifu plays you can’t help but feel completely consumed by his talent.
Thanks to the help of our wonderful Upper Campus music teacher Adam Woll, we are ready to take this audition head-on. Mr. Woll has supported Ifu and me since our first music theory class, and now he is confident we will do great.
“You’re going to do amazing, I know you will,” Mr. Woll told us. “Based on what I’ve seen, and what I know you can do, I can’t imagine that you will have any problems.”
Ifu and I aren’t the only ones who are not done as soon as the button is pressed.
Take senior Dylan Hamilton-West for example. Dylan is applying to 15 colleges, and for each college, he must submit an art portfolio along with his application to film schools. He spent countless hours writing, filming, and editing to perfect his video.
“Editing is one of the most vital parts of filmmaking,” Dylan said. “The editing aspect took me probably four sessions of me sitting there, for anywhere from three to six hours, just trying to perfect it trying to make it look flowy.”
Another example is senior Elizabeth Ramsay who is applying to 15 colleges as well, and submitting a music portfolio to any college that will take it. Elizabeth has been playing piano since she was three years old and recently has been following in her dad’s footsteps, by learning jazz piano. Even though she is not continuing down the musician path, the piano is something she will continue to play throughout her life.
“It’s something that I actually intrinsically love to do, not something that I do just because I have to,” Elizabeth said. “ I really began to love piano and I know that when I move into a house when I grow up it has to have a piano. I might be one of those people with like 10 keyboards.”
I feel that. On my dorm room wall, I’ve posted these Hobo Johnson lyrics:
“the way I listen to music is, f******, like, medicine, dude
It makes me feel better about my life, and, uh, my dream is to do that for other people”
Music is my lifeline. Every quarter note is a beat in my heart, and every rest is a breath. I can’t imagine doing anything else with my life. It has offered me comfort I’ve never found anywhere else, and in turn that’s what I want to provide.
One day I want to find myself in a stadium full of people who have come to see me, and to suddenly fall silent because they are singing in unison my song for me.
That’s my dream. All I’ve got to do is nail this audition.
