Upcoming IMEA Auditions

Congratulations to my students who are auditioning for IMEA this year. Best wishes to Stephanie S, Jessica R, Sam C, and Robby H who are all auditioning at the High School level this year. These students will be auditioning this week and next week.

The way the IMEA auditions work…

Students are selected and recommended by their high school band director(s) usually through auditions. These students go and compete at their district.

The audition consists of four different rooms per instrument. One room for the IMEA scales, another for sight reading, another for the slow etude, and the last for the fast etude. The auditions are blind (the judge in each room does not see the player—for fairness) and scoring/judging is done real-time.  Some districts are different like District 1 in Chicago area.  They have a more relaxed approach where there is no screen and the judge can interact with the players.

The top players are selected and then they go later in the year to the IMEA band (a festival band). From that group the All-State group is selected as well.

Raising Your Profile

When I work with musicians both professional, part-time, and amateur more often than not they all have something in common.  That is they are not marketing themselves to the outside world.  Sure, some carry their business card and a few have a website.  There are a few with a demo or even a CD they have recorded.  The real problem is that they do not have a cohesive plan for raising their profile to meet their own goals.

A professional musician does not automatically get playing jobs.  The phone isn’t ringing off the hook for their services.  More often than not the person hiring the musician has people that he or she works with and knows.  Going with an unknown or a new player is often not the first choice for the music director or contractor.

A part-time or amateur musician can really benefit from raising the profile especially if they want to acquire more playing jobs or move from volunteer work to paying jobs.

Word of mouth has its place and can be very helpful.  The bottom line is that the musician needs to take steps to get out there and make themselves known to the world at large.  That means developing and implementing a cohesive marketing plan and implementing it.

I have recently launched a service to address this very important need in the musical community.  The service is called Musician Advice.  I work individually with each artist (professional or aspiring) to create a cohesive marketing plan tailored to their specific goals and offer a full suite of services including website design and implementation, business card/postcard promo design and print, demo and full CD production, and one-on-one consulting on a wide variety of related subjects.

Please feel free to visit the website:

www.musicianadvice.com

You can also contact me at:

james@trumpeter.com

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas to all of my musician colleagues, my trumpet studio students, and my family!
It has been a busy Christmas Eve/Day for me with Eight Church Services! I had the opportunity to play as a soloist with a string orchestra as well as later with a harpist, strings, flute, trombone, sax and two great choirs!
So much great Christmas music out there!

Merry Christmas to all of you. I hope that this season has been a blessing to all of you.