Pedagogy Column—Teaching Strategies for Festival Auditions
by Grace Salyards (BM Eastman School of Music, MM Penn State University; Faculty, Dickinson College)
For many young musicians, their first audition can feel overwhelming—a high-stakes event that challenges not only their musical skills but also their mental resilience. Auditions are more than just a means of placement; they are significant opportunities for growth. I have developed four core strategies to guide my students through this process, helping them build skills that extend far beyond the audition room.
1. Teach Them How to Practice
Knowing how to effectively practice a passage of music is vital, and often overlooked in early years of playing an instrument. Young musicians often play an extensive passage over and over despite imperfections, which leads to reinforcing bad habits—strained phrases, rhythmic pauses, or poor intonation. These bad habits are highlighted in high-pressure situations like auditions, so one of the first things I do in lessons is teach them to break the music into very small, manageable sections, practicing slowly and slurred. This allows students to focus on the air support, which is the foundation of solid brass playing. Depending on the student's level, I will often play alongside them in the beginning, helping them feel supported. Once their air support is consistent, we gradually add articulation and build tempo. Think of it like ice cream: you start with the solid scoop, and you can add all the different sorts of sprinkles (articulation, phrasing, dynamics, and so on). For particularly technical passages, we isolate even smaller sections—sometimes just 2-4 sixteenth notes at a time—and aim for seven perfect repetitions at a very slow tempo with a metronome. Then, we increase speed just two clicks at a time. This kind of focused, goal-oriented practice shows students that even 20 minutes of concentrated effort can produce discernible results. More importantly, it provides structure they can apply to successfully learning any piece of music they approach in the future.
2. Teach Them How to Perform
Confidence in an audition is key! I often encourage my students to exude confidence in their playing, no matter whether it is authentic or acting. Performance is part music, part theater. The skill to project confidence—real or prepared—can thoroughly transform an audition. By practicing effectively, students deserve to feel confident. However, conveying this takes discipline and conviction, which we pursue in lessons. I offer students affirmations of their playing and abilities, and I also require them to verbally acknowledge their own strengths, training their inner thoughts.
3. Prepare Them for Nerves and Pressure
Nerves are inevitable, but we can prepare a response to them. In lessons, I condition their heart rates to rise under pressure as students do 30 seconds of jumping jacks or running in place, then immediately play their excepts with no recovery time. This mimics the physical effects nerves can have in an audition.
Usually the first attempt to play post-exercise is shaky, breathless, and almost certainly not very musical. But that's the point! We use these discouraging moments to discuss how nerves can affect all aspects of our playing, and I assign this kind of practice at home daily in the weeks leading up to an audition. In their audition preparation, I also encourage students to play for as many family members, friends, and teachers as possible—with “bonus points” if their audience tries to distract them! This strengthens the mental ability to focus under pressure.
4. Teach Them to Be Gracious, No Matter the Outcome
Long before the audition day arrives, I remind my students that their value as musicians is not determined by a ranking or chair placement. Whether they walk away with first chair or last, auditions are not a final judgment but, rather, a snapshot of one moment in time. Results are beyond our control, I remind them; what we can do is present our abilities the best we can. Learning how to practice with intention, perform with confidence, manage nerves with perseverance, and receive results with graciousness towards oneself and others are not just musical skills—they are life skills that will serve them for years to come.
Chamber Music Corner—Neikirk’s Blue Ridge Horn Trio
Chamber Music Corner—Neikirk’s Blue Ridge Horn Trio
by Layne Anspach
Anne Neikirk’s Blue Ridge Horn Trio will be the focus of Chamber Music Corner this month. Anne Neikirk (b. 1983) is an American composer and educator. She completed degrees at Hamilton College (BA), Bowling Green State University (MM in Composition), and Temple University (DMA in Composition). Her works have been performed by ensembles including the Toledo Symphony Orchestra, Duo Thalassa, The Orchestra of the Eastern Shore, the Arneis Quartet, and the Serafin Quartet, to name a few. Neikirk is a member of several professional organizations, she is currently editor of the Journal for Music Scores, and she is Associate Professor of Theory/Composition at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia.
Blue Ridge Horn Trio (2011) was written while Neikirk was studying at the Brevard Music Center Summer Festival in the Blue Ridge Mountains. Paralleling Brahms’ nature-inspired trio, Op. 40, Neikirk was inspired by the nature surrounding her during that summer in Brevard. The first movement, Andante, starts with a horn solo imitative of hunting calls. The violin and piano enter, building momentum and excitement. A short passage in 6/8 segues to Più mosso in 4/4 which displays a meandering run between violin and piano before giving way to a horn melody. Meno mosso (2:02) shifts back to 6/8, providing a short breather before returning to Più mosso. The original horn solo returns (3:17) prior to the final push, Furioso al fine, to the conclusion of the movement.
Neikirk is particularly drawn to the slow movement of Brahms, Op. 40. The slow movement of her work has “echoes of motives from his Adagio mesto.” Pastoral begins with a sustained pitch by the violin with piano figures alongside. The horn plays a short melody before the violin takes over (0:48) and is instructed to play “like a fiddle.” The horn joins, and the movement continues with moments of counterplay between the two. After a climactic ascending line (3:04), the two continue their dialogue with piano accompaniment. The movement dissipates, losing rhythm and volume, arriving at a still conclusion.
The final movement “reworks material from the first two movements in a fast and driving fashion.” The piano starts Allegro and is joined by the violin to evoke the texture described by the composer. The violin ventures on its own (0:46), propelling the movement to a middle section described as “sparce and timbrally contrasting.” This section includes trills and various techniques that add to the prescribed timbral change. An accelerando brings back the opening tempo and character (2:23), but it is eventually interrupted by a reworking of the horn solo from the first movement. Driving sixteenths from all players bring the work to a strong conclusion.
IHS 58—Getting Here
by Wojciech Kamionka
Welcome to regular posts about IHS 58 in Poland! Start by visiting this excellent tourist website: http://visitkrakow.com. Following is information on travel to the Symposium site.
By plane
Most air passengers will arrive via Kraków’s John Paul II International Airport (KRK) and, if possible, this is where you want to land. The Kraków Airport is located only 20 minutes train distance from the center of the city, and trains depart every half hour.
You may find direct flights from Chicago O’Hare (ORD) and New York—Newark (EWR) by Polish Airlines LOT (Star Alliance Member). If you fly from other starting points, you may check connections by well-known carriers with a stop in Frankfurt, Munich, Amsterdam, London, Brussels, Zurich, Vienna, etc. All those airports are just a +/- 2 hour flight to Kraków, with a few flights each day. If you fly from Asia or Australia, you may also find connections in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, or Istanbul.
There are also many long-distance travel possibilities with flights to Warsaw Chopin Airport by LOT (with direct flights from New York, Newark, Chicago, Miami, Los Angeles, Toronto, Tokyo, and Seoul) with a 40-minute connecting flight to Kraków, or 3 hours from Warsaw to Kraków by train.
From China to Warsaw, there is a direct flight from Beijing on Air China.
You can also check Katowice Airport located a 2-hour bus ride from Kraków.
Kraków Airport offers many destinations by regular and low fare airlines (like Ryanair, WizzAir, EasyJet), which makes travel to Kraków very easy—and this also makes it easy to plan unforgettable holidays before or after the Symposium.
From the Airport to the city
From the Kraków Airport, you may take a city train to the city center. It leaves every 30 minutes and takes about 20 minutes. The final stop should be Kraków’s Main Station (Kraków Główny). The station is in an excellent location, a mere 5-minute walk from the Old Town and just a 12-minute walk to the Academy, making it a convenient point of arrival. The station is fairly new and, as it is built into a large shopping mall, has nearly everything a traveller might need. Other nearby train stops may be Kraków Grzegórzki (also very close to the Academy and to Kazimierz Jewish City) or Kraków Zabłocie.
You may also take a taxi (Uber, Bolt, local taxi ICAR). Official Airport taxis (black ones) might be expensive. There are also city buses.
Reaching Kraków by train
Kraków Główny, the city’s main station, is served by trains from most Polish destinations as well as from the capital cities of neighboring countries. There are direct trains from Berlin, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, and Vilnius. Many of the longer journeys are overnight, with sleeping cars as an option.
The Polish rail network is run by a number of companies, and you should be aware that tickets are not interchangeable. Assume that a ticket is only valid for the particular journey for which you bought it. Other than that, the whole system is fairly easy to understand. Note that queues are common, so leave plenty of extra time if you’re buying a ticket at a train station. The best way is to buy tickets on the Polish Railways website: https://pkp.pl/en/ (for all train companies).
The network is comfortable and reasonably fast. It’s also cheap, depending on the type of train you choose. The 289 km journey from Warsaw to Kraków can be done in less than 2.5 hours on the faster trains, at a cost of 35€ for a second-class ticket. The slower trains take an hour longer but cost only 14€ one-way.
The fastest trains are operated by PKP InterCity and are marked on timetables as EIP (Express InterCity Premium). In summertime you need to buy these tickets in advance—up to 30 days ahead—as seat reservations are necessary. But you can buy tickets online from outside Poland; first- and second-class tickets are available, and snacks are available on these trains.
By Bus
Flixbus offers numerous connections to Kraków.
By Car
Coming to Kraków by car may be a good option. It’s 5 hours’ drive from Vienna, Bratislava or Prague, and 6 from Berlin or Dresden. The Academy is located in a restricted traffic zone, so you may use the following address as your destination: ul. Zyblikiewicza 1, Kraków.
Parking on streets in the city center is paid parking daily from Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. You may also find guarded parking lots.
Invitations
If you need an invitation for your university or institution, contact the host by e-mail ihs58info@gmail.com. Specify precisely your planned activity (Contributing Artist, Participant etc.) and whether the invitation will be only for you or for your students or both. Write accurately the name of your institution. We will do our best as soon as possible.
Chamber Music Corner—Holbrooke Trio in D Minor
by Layne Anspach
Joseph Holbrooke’s Trio in D Minor for Horn, Violin and Piano, Op. 28 is the focus of this month’s Chamber Music Corner. Joseph Holbrook (1878-1958) was an English composer and pianist. He is often credited as a leading advocate of works of his British contemporaries. A graduate of the Royal Academy of Music, Holbrooke composed a wide variety of works from symphonies, ballets, and operas to solo piano works and chamber music. Holbrooke’s Wagner-like operatic trilogy, The Cauldron of Annwn, is the epitome of his interest in Welsh subjects as it is based on Welsh mythology.
The Trio in D Minor, Op. 28 (also incorrectly published as Op. 36) was written in 1902 but not premiered until July 4, 1904 in Paris. The work was dedicated to hornist Adolf Borsdorf who, with John Saunders, violin, and Holbrooke at the piano, performed the premiere. The work was originally Byronic in inspiration with the manuscript featuring a few lines of Byron’s Don Juan.
The work starts with a slow introduction, Larghetto sostenuto. Interestingly, the first movement, which is roughly in sonata form, is in compound meter rather than simple. The horn begins the work alone but is quickly followed by piano and violin. The piano brings the ensemble to a new tempo, Allegro con brio, and the primary theme, a descending motif which each instrument presents. The piano introduces the second theme with the horn and violin responding after 8 bars. This theme builds to a climax before relenting, after which the exposition is repeated. The development starts with soft piano, interrupted by a loud, boisterous horn call. The rest of the development uses mostly motifs from the first theme. A definitive statement of the primary theme, albeit slightly manipulated, may be misunderstood as the start of the recapitulation. The true recap enters unassumingly. Holbrooke tricks the attentive listener by presenting the recap’s second theme in D major. The movement ends in the major with a lively conclusion.
The second movement, Adagio non troppo, is in ternary form. There is a short piano introduction followed by a horn solo. The violin answers with its own solo, resolved with horn and violin playing together. A short second theme is introduced prior to the start of the B section. Andante, poco allegretto moves into simple triple meter and the dominant key. The return is to an abbreviated but energetic A section which calms as the movement ends.
The final movement, Molto vivace, is a happy, light-hearted rondo. The A theme is presented by the piano while violin and horn present it a few measures later. Tranquillo offers a calmer contrast. Holbrooke, as expected, alters the melodies and key areas to create excitement and drama throughout the movement which culminates in an exhilarating Vivace coda.
The reference recording is from the album Music by Three (Albany); Eric Ruske is the hornist.
Book Release—Solo
Book Release—Solo
by Caroline Swinburne
Many years ago, I attended a concert of The Planets, in a large and prestigious venue, televised live to a global audience. Venus begins with a very exposed solo horn part, and I was sitting close enough to the stage to notice that the musician was visibly shaking. To my relief, the performance was, by no standards, a “disaster;” on the contrary, it was note-perfect, except that the player’s breath was trembling very slightly, resulting in the tiniest, barely perceptible, tinge of vibrato. I doubt anyone but a horn-player would have noticed. But I felt the performance was hovering on a knife-edge, and the story could have ended very differently.
The episode reminded me rather too pertinently of some of my own less-than-comfortable experiences on less-eminent stages; as every horn player will know, the instrument’s reputation as the riskiest in the orchestra is well deserved. And I started to wonder what would happen next, if things went wrong on an epic scale, for someone for whom the horn was not only their love but their livelihood.
The result was my debut novel, Solo, which tells the story of Cate, a fictional horn player with a top UK orchestra until a miscarriage causes an onstage panic attack and a famous solo goes disastrously wrong in front of a huge audience. Her contract with the orchestra isn’t renewed, and she’s too traumatised to audition for another one (especially when she discovers that that solo is on the audition repertoire list). Instead, she gives up the horn, reinvents herself online, trains as a language teacher, and travels the world trying to forget. Freed from the tyranny of the daily practice routine, and with no need to worry about the next concert, she tries but fails to persuade herself that she’s wasted all those years enslaved to a length of brass tubing.
It’s ten, arid years later before she’s drawn in to mentoring Sarah, a talented but under-educated teenage horn player with a local amateur orchestra. Like a younger version of Cate, Sarah has fallen in love with the horn and has ambitions to play professionally. But her family have no money and can’t afford a teacher or a decent instrument. Cate is her only hope if she is to achieve her dreams. When the orchestra announces that their next concert will include the work which was Cate’s undoing, Sarah’s big break is at stake. She offers Cate the chance of redemption—if she can finally face her demons.
Solo will be published by The Book Guild and available from all major retailers, both in ebook and print formats, from September 28, 2025. www.carolineswinburne.com
Composer Spotlight—Liana Alexandra
by Caiti Beth McKinney
Hi everyone,
This month I want to highlight Liana Alexandra (1947-2011), an incredibly accomplished and prolific composer, musician, and educator from Romania. She was a huge advocate for the performance of contemporary music and for understanding composers as individuals and not lumping them together in one category. She resisted labels like “traditionalist” or “avant-garde,” preferring to compose as her piece demanded. Alexandra composed in nearly every genre, including a substantial collection of pieces for large forces like orchestra and wind ensemble, as well as a wide variety of chamber music.
Luckily for us horn players, this includes several works that feature our instrument, including her sonata for horn and piano, Intersections. Available publicly on IMSLP (as are all the pieces I will discuss here), Intersections is a workout in timbral complexities and interpretation for both players. The piece incorporates elements of both Modernism and Minimalism, using repeated rhythmic motifs interspersed with moments of calm melody or dramatic glissandi and flutter tongue to create, to my ear, a sense of conversation between three parties—two sides of the horn player and the piano. Intersections is a piece that bears repeat listening to gain full understanding as there is quite a bit of depth to Alexandra’s writing in this work.
Alexandra also composed both a wind quintet, Images Interrupted, and a brass quintet, Collages. Collages plays with timbre and texture throughout the work, using extended techniques like stopped horn, glissandi, pitch bending, and mutes to create vivid imagery that alternates between ethereal calm and frenzied activity. Images Interrupted is another exercise in extended techniques and modern sounds. The first movement opens with an unmeasured, out-of-time feel, slowly stacking and unstacking the members of the quintet and incorporating dramatic dynamic shifts. The entire work calls for a true collaboration between players as well as a holistic understanding of the score. This under-recorded work would be an excellent project for a wind quintet with “new music” experience.
Student Column—Communicating the Soft Skills of Studying Music
by Inman Hebert
As we begin another year of university, music students prepare to learn vast amounts of music theory, history, and pedagogy. In mentally preparing for yet another busy semester, I considered how to respond to the questions naysayers ask about the value of studying music.
For music majors, we possess a passion that drives us to study, understand, and practice music in developing our skills to turn our pursuit into a career. However, skeptics often point to statistics that suggest many of us, particularly as performance majors, may never reach these goals, or at least not to the extent once thought possible.
As musicians, we all inherently recognize the philosophical and esoteric beauty of music. Even if it is difficult to verbalize, music provides us with a universal language with which to express ourselves. With an instrument, we can convey the spectrum of the human experience. (For me, the unique power of music solves any Kafkaesque existential crises inherent in proclaiming myself a music major.)
While we could endlessly discuss the philosophy behind music’s power, many critics would argue that philosophy cannot solve the real-life struggles of the performance aspects of being a music major. For our families, we need to discuss the social and emotional benefits and creative opportunities found in music; however, how can we respond to those who only speak the language of business to question the study of music? Focusing on the soft skills increasingly valued by employers allows us to communicate how music study prepares students to contribute to any work environment.
Nearly all music majors know the experience of managing a busy schedule. We often take more classes than students in other majors, all while handling ensemble, chamber music, and individual practice schedules. Our lifestyle requires a great degree of dedication, adaptability, and time management skills which prove valuable in the workplace and elsewhere. Our schedules require a strong work ethic that prepares us for the responsibilities all professionals must juggle.
To develop virtuosity in music, students must adopt a mindset of accepting and responding to constructive feedback in lessons and apply that input in our practice to facilitate growth. Playing an instrument with a variety of difficult intricacies, we must learn to constructively problem-solve the horn’s unique challenges. All this effort leads to the additional challenges of addressing, at some level, the burdens of performance anxiety. Years of honing these skills provide us with the adaptability to perform well in any professional environment.
Music also teaches us about collaboration. Even the most famous soloists in the world work with conductors and pianists. We often collaborate in both large ensembles and chamber groups. Orchestras can only be successful when all members fill their roles under the conductor’s vision. Chamber music teaches us to cooperate with our peers, often compromising to reach a musical vision. These interpersonal skills serve as the foundation for professional success.
To those who doubt the viability of our major—including even ourselves at times—learning and communicating the soft skills we acquire as music majors can silence the naysayers.
