2020 Audition Recap

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2020 Audition Recap

On December 18, 2019, in News

After four weeks, six cities, and countless hours of practice and preparation, the 2020 audition season is quickly coming to a close.

This fall, BAC auditionees attended a one-day audition in either Indianapolis, San Antonio, Dallas, Orlando, Philadelphia, or Portsmouth (NH), or submitted a video audition. After successful completion of the first round, brass and percussion callbacks were invited to a full weekend camp in San Antonio. Color guard auditionees, who are in the thick of indoor rehearsals, will join us in April for their final round of auditions.

With only a handful of spots left open from 2019 age-outs, we were excited to welcome over 100 new BAC brass and percussion hopefuls to Douglas MacArthur High School for our callback camp this weekend in San Antonio. Auditionees were led through a jam-packed weekend of choreography, marching, and music skills building led by our full brass, percussion and visual staff. While brass veterans were not required to attention callbacks, the new auditionees were joined by our veteran percussionists and leadership team, including our three drum majors, Josh Ballinger, Gavin Schmidt, and Calvin Householder.

Both the returning members and auditionees are already raising the bar this season. The talent exhibited throughout auditions, but especially this weekend in San Antonio is extremely impressive, which made final decisions very difficult. With high retention in the brass section, the competition for the available positions was fierce and will extend through January camp for the remaining trumpet spots.

While the first minute of the 2020 production is written, the focus of the callback camp was to evaluate each individual in an ensemble setting and work through encore tunes. Next month, both the brass and percussion will arrive in San Antonio with the first 3 minutes of the 2020 show prepared. It’s shaping up to be an exciting season for BAC!

Making these important weekends happen certainly takes a village. Thank you to our brass instructor Evan Berry and the Douglas MacArthur High School for the use of your beautiful facilities this weekend! And of course, we couldn’t have made the move down to Texas without our team of volunteers. Thank you Jeff Lockard, Barrett Clark, Debbie Roddenberry, Steve Woodward, and Kelli Buescher for tackling everything from cooking to transportation.

If you would like to help out at a camp, we are currently seeking volunteers for our next camp January 24th-26th at Tejeda Middle School in San Antonio. Please reach out to Jack Kaplan at jkaplan@bostoncrusaders.org for more information.