Their 15 minutes
Applying to Berklee College of Music doesn't just mean filling out forms. Prospective students also have to audition.
Hoping to become the next Diana Krall or Aimee Mann, perhaps, Kidada Perrymond walked into a Berklee College of Music audition room and faced faculty members Scott deOgburn and Sean Skeete. Perrymond, a 22-year-old vocalist from Atlanta, was about to get her 15-minute shot at winning a spot in next fall's freshman class.
She began by singing "The Star-Spangled Banner" a cappella, no easy task. After delivering a nearly flawless performance, Perrymond's real test began, however, when she was asked to scat sing to a blues melody played by deOgburn on the piano. Next she was instructed to improvise lyrics to the melody based on what she'd picked out to wear that morning.
Perrymond nailed that, too, closing with the ad-libbed lines: "I've gotta get into Berklee/ Please choose me!" Once she departed, Skeete praised Perrymond as being "head and shoulders" above most first-year vocal students at Berklee. He and deOgburn awarded her average scores of 6.8 (scaled from 1 to 8) across multiple categories, their equivalent of a standing O.
For deOgburn, Skeete, and dozens more faculty auditioners, a long day of listening and evaluating was just getting underway. Some 500 applicants had turned out for the final two days of the college's pre-admission tryouts in March, filling a campus building with their instrument cases and sheet music, homemade CDs and hopeful, if nervous, chatter about future careers in the music business.
At a time of year when local colleges have been making tough decisions on who gets admitted, the Berklee auditions - part "American Idol"-style competition, part traditional college interview - offered a behind-the-scenes glimpse of how one institution goes about the business of replenishing its student body.
With an alumni pool that includes such music world superstars as Krall, Mann, Quincy Jones, and Branford Marsalis, Berklee has seen its profile and popularity soar in recent years. About 30 percent of those seeking admission this spring - Berklee has 4,000 on-campus students and will admit 1,200 applicants in order to guarantee filling 850 openings next fall - could count on getting in. The college revamped its admissions process in 2005 to reflect this growing selectivity, now requiring all applicants, not just aspiring scholarship students, to audition as in years past.
Nearly 4,200 applicants auditioned this year at 41 sites around the United States and overseas. Tryouts typically consist of 15 minutes each of warm-up, performance and aptitude test, and interview, according to Berklee officials. With the final audition deadline looming, the pressure to make a favorable impression was etched upon the faces of those who'd traveled to Boston from as far away as Mexico and California.
"The portal for entry is through performance, but we're admitting students to all our 13 majors," said assistant vice president for international programs Greg Badolato as he sat in back of an audition room with a reporter. While the live performance counts, he continued, "It's not the student's absolute value. We try to find out what they do best, what their potential is, and not what their weaknesses are."
Badolato, an accomplished saxophonist who once chaired the college's ear training department, has been evaluating Berklee applicants for 15 years, both in Boston and at locations around the world. He dismissed the "Idol" comparison, insisting there was no place at Berklee for the brand of criticism a Simon Cowell dispenses. "Tough love works over 15 weeks, maybe, but not 15 minutes," Badolato observed.
For an outsider allowed access to Berklee's audition process, it was hard not to be impressed by the talent on display and by the personal stories being told, not only in songs and instrumental performances but in words as well.
Yasmine Springs, an R&B vocalist from Maryland, told admissions staffer Alexia Rosari during a post-audition interview that she hoped to become a recording artist and producer someday. Only when the session was wrapping up, and Rosari inquired about her home life, did Springs's countenance change, her voice drop to a near-whisper.
Actually, she confided, her family was homeless for the time being.
John Reynolds, a New England Conservatory student hoping to transfer to Berklee, sang an aria from Handel's "Lotario" followed by a blues-melody improvisation, both performances exhilaratingly good. Bob Etienne, 18, a Fort Lauderdale high schooler, sat in a downstairs lounge area awaiting his audition. Etienne, anxiously drumming on a tabletop, said school friends had funded his trip to Boston, his own family having declined to help. He joked that he'd give teachers and classmates a 5 percent royalty if he hit it big.
Fighting a case of butterflies, Boston Arts Academy senior Christina Rodriguez was practicing a pair of songs before her tryout: "Yo Le
Among the youngest auditionees was 16-year-old Oliver Hopkins from Indianapolis. Hopkins, a guitarist and singer-songwriter, was applying to Berklee's summer program for high schoolers. He had chosen two songs to perform, "Neon," by Berklee graduate John Mayer, and an original tune Hopkins slyly called "Berklee or Bust."
"I'm looking for the type of expression that tells me right away if they like it or not," Hopkins said of his faculty evaluators. A couple of hours later, Hopkins stood around the building lobby. "I thought it went pretty well," he said. "But I was kind of disappointed by the lack of feedback."
"Don't they do that around here?" his mother wondered, standing nearby and looking drained by the whole experience.
During breaks between audition sessions, Berklee staff members replayed some of the year's greatest hits: the accordion player who'd mastered his instrument while sailing around the world, solo; the 17-year-old trumpeter from Philadelphia who, when asked how he'd learned to play flawless bebop, said he'd "figured out the trick" listening to Charlie Parker records; the Oregon cellist who not only played beautifully but sang along in Russian, earning a rare 8 from her auditioners.
Berklee sent out admissions letters shortly after all the auditions concluded. For Perrymond, Etienne, Rodriguez, and Reynolds, the last round of applause came in the form of acceptance letters and scholarship offers.
Joseph P. Kahn can be reached at jkahn@globe.com.
