journey to manhattan, part II

well, as promised here is installment number 2 of my trip to the MSM audition in NYC (don't ya love acronyms?).

Sunday

i woke up at about 7:30a and popped right out of bed...or should i say, andy's couch. i had used my north face jacket as a blanket and slept with no pillow. colin was on the hardwood floor with a blanket, using one of the couch cushions as a pillow. despite going to bed at 2:30a, being woken up by colin's phone ringing at 4a, sleeping on a couch with no pillow or blanket, i felt surprisingly awake at 7:30. i'm pretty sure it was the adrenaline of being 3 hours away from my audition. anyways, i took a shower, put on my suit, woke colin up, waited for his slow ass to get ready, and we hit the subway.

the manhattan school is on 122nd and claremont so we knew that we'd be getting off at the 125th st exit. having parked my car in front of the school last summer on a trip to the city, i had an idea of landmarks to expect when we got out of the subway. i didn't see those landmarks and began to wonder where the crap we were. so, we walked to 122nd and turned in the direction i thought we should. after a block i realized it wasn't the right way and we turned around and went the other direction. after a couple of blocks we came to a T intersection....which was no good because we hadn't run into our cross street yet. so we went down to 123, and then continued in the same direction. finally we recognized where we were and found the school. phew.

with an hour before my audition, i went to the practice rooms only to find that they were full. all 3 floors of them. with about 45 minutes to go, i found one and began warming up. luckily the auditions were running behind and i was able to feel warmed up before i went in. right before my audition colin came up and sat down next to me. he gave me his headphones and said "here, listen to this, it'll relax you." we were probably the only two that dared to listen to jimmy smith before going into our classical trombone auditions at the manhattan school of music. it worked though, because i felt a little more relaxed.

the audition went well. the panel was steve norell (bass bone of the met. opera), dave finalayson (2nd in the ny phil) and a tuba player whose name i can't remember right now. i played a solid audition. i didn't receive much indication of what they thought of my playing. just a couple "nice job" and "sounds good" type comments. i've figured out, after taking a number of auditions, that that's about all you'll ever hear from the panel. they just have so many people to listen to and are constantly surrounded by good musicians that you're just never going to wow them. even if you did, though, i'm sure they wouldn't say much to you immediately after you're done. which is fine. i can wait for the letter.

after colin finished his audition we went back to andy's place, changed out of our suits, and hit the town. first we grabbed some pizza at a place just a few blocks down from andy's. then we got on the subway and went down to soho to visit the apple store. colin hadn't seen it and soho is a pretty cool place. it was gorgeous outside too, so we bummed around down there for a while.

next we went up to rockafeller plaza because colin wanted to revisit the sharper image store. when we got there we went up to the ice rink and watched all the skaters. there was one guy that instantly grabbed our attention. he was wearing his iPod and skating around doing all these crazy awkward moves, inspired by whatever crap he was listening to, i'm sure. at first i kinda chuckled, then i lost it and was laughing so hard i almost started to cry. he was doing this move where after almost running into another skater, he would skate backwards on one leg while thrashing is other leg back and forth in the air, then turn around and do this thing with his shoulders. then....a girl fell down next to him and he was instantly transformed into romeo. the problem was that juliet was interested at all and he didn't catch the hint. he kept putting his hand out for her to hold and i can't imagine how awkward the conversation must have been. colin and i began talking as if we were them. you can only imagine some of things we said. all and all, we laughed for a good half hour which is exactly what we needed after the traveling and auditioning. release is a good thing.

next we went to the sharper image store and sat in their massaging chairs for a while. as i was sitting there i witnessed an all out religous debate that again had me in stitches. there were two couples, probably average age of 40 or so, who, from what i could gather, didn't know each other. one couple was looking at a gps system as the other couple walked by. one of the guys kinda looked over at the other guy and said something like "aren't these things incredible." the other guy kind of acknowledged and said something about how times have changed, or something to that effect. from there, and i have no idea how they got to this, they began arguing about jesus while i sat there in the reclined massaging chair, trying to hold my laughter in. after about 15 minutes i couldn't take it any more and we left. the last thing i remember hearing was one lady saying "do you think life is easy? because i sure don't." yeah, maybe that's because you spend your time in sharper image stores arguing about the bible with random people...gotta love the colorful people of new york city!

after that we met up with andy and got burritos at this really good mexican place. they were huge and i barely finished half of mine. colin, of course, demolished his. i love that guy. after dinner we watched a movie called "16 blocks" at a nearby theatre. it was pretty good. maybe not $10.50 good, but it was still nice to relax in a comfy chair and be mildly entertained for a couple hours. after the movie we went back to andy's and crashed. we were completely exhausted.

to be continued...