Sight reading auditions are a head fake.
When I put a sight reading component on an audition, the auditionees think, naturally, that I’m interested mostly in their skill at sight reading.
I’m not. I’m interested in:
- How they recover from mistakes.
- How they hear tonality.
- How they handle stress and anxiety in the moment.
- How they think about and talk about music.
- What their level of music literacy is.
- How they strategize about sight reading.
It’s a head fake – we’re looking at the sight reading but I’m paying attention to a completely different set of things.