Audition Requirements
Commercial/Jazz
Winds
Trumpets
- All Major Scales
- Sight-reading
- Required Pieces: Miles Davis’ solo on "Freddie Freeloader" (pdf), trumpet part to Stevie Wonder’s "Superstition," mm. 21-36 (pdf)
- Soloists: improvise at least 3 choruses over a 12 bar blues in F or Bb
- Lead players: Perform the Shout Chorus to Basie’s "April in Paris", mm. 65 - end (pdf)
- Optional: play the melody and improvise 1 chorus over a jazz ballad of your choice
Saxes
- All Major Scales.
- Blues Scales (all 12 keys)
- Sight-reading
- The blues etude (pdf) and the rhythm changes etude (pdf). Tempos need not be as fast as marked.
- Play the melody of "Body & Soul" in a ballad style.
- Improvise over a 12-bar blues for several choruses, either F or Bb.
Trombones
- All Major Scales
- Sight-reading
- Perform “Body and Soul” in a lyrical ballad style
- Perform Wycliffe Gordon transcription (pdf)
- Soloists: improvise at least 3 choruses over a 12 bar blues in F or Bb
Voice
- Please perform one selection from the Great American Songbook (ie. Porter, Gershwin, Lerner/Loewe, Rodgers/Hart, etc).
- A piano accompanist will be provided for your audition. Please bring piano music for your selected song, placed in a three-ring binder.
Rhythm Section
Piano, Guitar, and Electric Bass
- All major scales
- Sight-reading: single-note melody, interpret chord changes over rhythm slashes, chord changes with notated rhythms (sample pdf).
- Perform melody, improvise and comp on a jazz blues, such as "Sonnymoon for Two," "Tenor Madness," or “Billie’s Bounce”
- A solo piece of student’s choosing in a jazz or commercial style (non-classical solo piece)
Double Bass
- In addition to the above requirements, please have one arco piece prepared