The Auditions are OVER!
I'm so glad that my doctoral auditions are finally over! It was one of the most challenging projects of my musical career and it is looking like I should have some great options to choose from.
The first audition took place at New York University. I had a great time and hung out with Kylie and Clayton Briggs who were more than generous letting me stay in their apartment in Brooklyn. We ate a lot of good food (SHAKE SHACK YEAH) and also went to see the NY Phil perform. It was a great concert and Emmanuel Ax was amazing as usual. It was pretty cold and snowy almost the entire time and the temperature was around 20-35 degrees. It wasn't anything too challenging as I have had much colder weather in the past.
The audition happened a few days after my run through recital (which helped tremendously) and went pretty well. The panel ended up being my former teacher Eduardus Halim and one other person. I didn't get as nervous as I usually do and Mr. Halim enjoyed the Ginastera. They liked my dissertation topic on Sight Reading and it was nice to catch up with Mr. Halim.
I also caught up with my good NYU friends Andrew and Peiharn. They filled me in on the latest piano happenings at NYU and definitely cleared some things up for me. I was very disappointed that Grant Weanus will no longer be teaching collaborative piano there. That is a major deal for me as I really want to focus on collaborative piano. Grant is an amazing musician and to not be able to work with him really bums me out. I really didn't miss the NYC subway life and the struggle of being a student in one of the most expensive cities in the world. I like commuting in my car and the thought of having to be crammed like sardines again really doesn't appeal to me. The PHD program at NYU only accepts 1 person every two years, so I am assuming that I won't get in so that if I actually did it would be a huge surprise to me. I still love the city of NY but only want to live there if I am filthy rich.
My next audition was at UC Santa Barbara the following weekend, and the weather couldn't have contrasted New York more..... It was 67 degrees and the sky was perfectly clear. The weather was spectacular and the drive on the 101 was full of green hills and beautifully blue oceans. UCSB picked a pretty good weekend to recruit me.
My good friend Matt joined me on the trip and played beautifully. The audition went well and after playing for almost 55 minutes straight we had a nice lunch with the collaborative piano professor Robert Koenig. He was very hospitable to us and he let me know immediately that I had been accepted into their program with a Full ride and teaching assistantship. This was a huge huge weight off of my back and I was very excited to know I am officially going somewhere after my time at Stanislaus ends this semester. I received an email this week from UCSB saying that they are recommending me for the Central Fellowship. If I get that the stipend will be around $25000 per year which would be absolutely huge. I have also been selected into the University's premier performing ensemble which carries another stipend of $5000.
A couple of weeks later the audition for USC took place. The weather was really nice and it was great staying at my uncle's place in Simi Valley. The campus had undergone so much construction since my past visit and everything looked wonderful. I always got weird vibes attending the campus in the past, and this time everything felt extremely comfortable. The audition went very well and I had a really nice lesson with the head of Collaborative Piano Alan Smith. He let me know that I had passed the audition and that they were recommending me for admission into the DMA program. I now have to be admitted from USC Graduate school itself, and should find out around March 1st. I applied to a couple of assistantships and it should be interesting to see what they offer in comparison to UCSB.
I had a lot of fun all over LA. Matt and I went to Shake Shack in Beverly Hills and walked around Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica. We also celebrated with wine and pizza, and watched the Warriors Game. Matt cracked me up rooting for his team and he reminded me of my Uncle Scott watching the Lakers. It was like I was watching the same man in the same house watch basketball. It was absolutely hilarious. I visited my cousins in Manhattan beach for an hour before driving to Chapman. I had a great dinner with my former teacher Karen Knecht and had fun catching her up on all the auditions and life happenings at Stanislaus. She took me to a concert at Chapman's brand new Performing Arts Center and it was absolutely phenomenal. The concert hall is out of this world and the acoustics were excellent. The pianist played a great program: Beethoven Sonatas Op. 27 1 and 2, Chopin's 2nd and 3rd Ballade, and Pictures. He was very musical and everybody enjoyed the concert very much. It was nice to see Dr. Matthews and Dr. Park, but I wasn't able to see Dr. Fong and Dr. Thomas.
My last audition took place this last weekend at Cincinnati Conservatory. I got sick after USC and wasn't able to practice as much as I'd like. It was a really weird trip. I went with one of our students at Stanislaus as he was auditioning for their Master's Program. We had a nice time, the cheap hotel room I got ended up being pretty nice and I really liked the downtown area around the sports stadiums. It was right on the water and there were lots of call bars and restaurants. Downtown is only 10 minutes away from CCM and there is also a pretty nice casino with great poker action. I didn't really like the neighborhoods around downtown and the university. They were full of old buildings which definitely fit into the Midwest and they reminded me of my time in Racine, Wisconsin. I didn't really see myself living anywhere but downtown in the nice apartments / condos.
The audition was the weakest of the four and I made a lot of dumb mistakes that I have never done. There were memory slips and I just felt it that I played sloppy because I was sick. The audition was only 15 minutes and went by extremely fast. The committee was very cold and seemed like they were shuffling us in and out quickly. I couldn't tell it they liked my playing at all and they hardly spoke. The facilities at CCM were fantastic and were probably the best of the four but I wasn't feeling good vibes at all. To top it all off the collaborative professor that I scheduled a lesson with completely forgot about me and had no recollection of the many email we exchanged in the months preceding the audition. He apologized a lot but I didn't get to play for him at all because he was busy working on a Russian Diction project. He wasn't on the audition panel and I really wanted to show him some of the collaborative repertoire that I was working on. He said that he would watch all of the materials that I sent him later that night. He made up for it however, and offered me an assistantship in accompanying for the vocal department. Unfortunately I found out yesterday that I didn't get accepted into the program. I wasn't really feeling it so now I don't have to worry about that factoring into my tough decision coming up.
I had a lot of fun and am so excited that this process is over. Everything is now out of my control and I should be finding out more details from all of the schools anytime after March 1st. I will have time to update my website. I have so much work to do and so many compositions and recordings to upload. I've started streaming on www.twitch.tv/jpeben23 and that has been a lot of fun. Follow me on there to stay updated and get notifications of when I stream. I also have a big performance coming up next Friday the 24th at 7:30PM at CSU Stanislaus. It is our Faculty Chamber Concert and I will be performing a Spanish Set with Sandra Bengochea (our talented voice instructor) and Mozart's Violin Sonata in E minor with Matt. It should be a great concert and I hope to see you there! That's all for now... Poker blog coming in the next few days!
