LexPhil - Dawn of the First Day

This past Sunday, I helped with the Lexington Philharmonic during their oboe auditions. I helped with some of the setup, put up signs directing auditioners to the entrance to the building, and then led them from the audition room to where they'd wait to learn the results of their audition. Even though most of my job was climbing up and down stairs, I had a really great time! It was awesome being around music and musicians again (I was a percussionist for six years), and listening in on the auditions was incredible. The oboes were really nice people too. The first guy to audition had been sick the past few days and came out after his audition triumphantly crowing "I didn't cough!!"

A panorama of the interior of one of the sanctuaries
 of First Presbyterian Church of Lexington.

The auditions were held in the First Presbyterian Church of Lexington, which was built in 1872. As an art student and major art nerd I was absolutely swooning over the stained glass. Old churches are some of the most breathtaking buildings to be in and this was no exception. The exterior was old brick with a pair of giant front doors leading directly up into the main sanctuary. The acoustics were amazing as well, which obviously is a good quality to have in an audition setting. Everything echoed and rang and felt overwhelming and everywhere.

A proud oboe farmer displays her crop.
[A woman standing next to an array of oboes]

Something interesting I noticed on Sunday was that they placed carpet squares (like the sample sizes you'd see at a flooring store) on the floor where auditions were taking place. I read a while back about how even with blind auditions (where the judges couldn't see the candidate) men were disproportionately more likely to be hired after an audition, until someone put down carpeting. It turned out that the judges were hearing the women's heels clicking on the floor and even that little bit of information was enough to color their perceptions of the auditioners. It was really cool to see that concept in action firsthand!

One of my favorite "jobs" of the day was when some of the judges needed to take a restroom break. The restroom was down the hall from the audition room, but you had to walk past the waiting room to get there. The judges weren't allowed to see the auditioners at all, so Amanda Tallant (the woman in charge of the college volunteers) and I stood in front of the doors while the judges rushed past. It was pretty hilarious. 

Chatting with the musicians was really neat. I didn't get a lot of conversation in besides "Do you need to get anything from your warmup room?", "The waiting room is right this way", and "This staircase. No really THIS staircase", but it was still neat. I got a few compliments on my hair, offered a few Werther's Originals to some, and even cracked a bit of a joke: "My job is pretty much just 'this way to the waiting room... I'm basically the oboe sheepdog"

One last image for the road:

An image portraying me, hard at work escorting the oboes.
[A sheepdog, herding sheep]

[Image sources: kaintuckeean.com, hannahsoboes.com, belfasttelegraph.co.uk]