Honors Auditions
I was at Del Mar College for 35 years and one of my proudest achievements during that time was getting my students’ pictures on the wall of fame.
At Del Mar College, every year, we hold an Honors auditions.
When I first started, the auditions were held in the fall semester and the winners of the auditions would play in the Honors concert in the spring.
Later, we changed the auditions to the spring semester, and the concert was held a couple of weeks after.
Winning the auditions is no easy matter. You’d have to play in front of a jury made up of the music professors. The professors served on a rotational basis.
In the past, before the music department moved to its new buildings, the hallways in the department were lined with photos of the winners of past honors auditions.
If you were to look at them, you would notice that many of the past winners were guitarists.
In fact, there was one year when there were only three winners in the honors auditions and they were all guitar players—quite an honor considering this is a full music department with woodwinds, brass, strings, percussion and piano students.
Only three winners that year and they were all guitar players.
This is also a testament to how unique the music department at Del College was and is. No personal agendas or rivalries, no politics, just a shared love for music and for music making.
And this is why I feel so blessed to have been a part of it for 35 years.