How does a musician get a job in a professional orchestra?
Once there is an opening in a professional orchestra, the orchestra will advertise that they will be holding an audition to fill that position. When the audition is announced, musicians from around the country will submit a resume to apply to take the audition. The orchestra will then determine which applicants they will accept to audition and tell them what excerpts of music they would like to hear at the audition. At a single audition, there may be as many as 100 people (or more) auditioning for the single opening in the orchestra. At the audition, the first round is considered the preliminary round, where each musician gets approximately 5-10 minutes to play the requested excerpts of music behind a screen so the audition committee cannot see who is playing. Then the audition committee (usually made up of 5-10 members of the orchestra plus the conductor) will cut musicians they feel are not qualified, and will pass on some candidates to the semifinal round. Those candidates will then
