Junior Regional Orchestra, or JRO for short, is a timeless event that has been hosted throughout Virginia for decades. JRO has a highly exclusive, competitive environment for students in seventh, eighth, or ninth grade with only 90-100 kids permitted state-wide. This year, Clover Hill High School has three freshmen in attendance: Charles Agada, Finnegan Davis, and Teddy Brightman.
The Virginia Band and Orchestra Directors Association (VBODA) is hosting JRO at Randolph Macon College in Ashland, VA. Clover Hill’s own Orchestra Director Teresa Maclin elaborates on the logistics.
“In the state of Virginia, or I should say the Commonwealth of Virginia, the VBODA divides the state up into 13 different districts,” Maclin said. “Then some of those districts come together as a region, and there is an audition.”
The audition itself was held this December for our freshmen, in which all three that auditioned made the cut.
“In this particular event, the audition was the first weekend in December, I believe, and seventh, eighth, and ninth graders prepare material and are invited to audition,” Maclin said. “Based on that audition, there are two orchestras that are filled. Invitations go out to those folks that are selected based on their audition, and if they’re a successful audition, they’re invited to participate in the event.”
She explained how the process is very competitive for the musicians among us, sporting only around 90 seats for the hundreds of kids auditioning.
“Students prepare and audition and they compete for seats,” Maclin said. “They’ll only accept like 45 kids in each ensemble, so that’s about 90, maybe 100 kids total. Violin, Cello, base, harp, and sometimes piano. For about 100 spots in these two orchestras, they’ll have like almost 500 kids come out to audition for those spots. It’s very competitive.”
Maclin shared how students with hopes of auditioning go through a rigorous process to be one of the luckiest few.
“They have to prepare scales and they have to prepare a piece of music that they’ve worked on. Everybody plays the same thing, and then there’s a site reading portion. So scales, an excerpt or prepared piece, and then sight reading music they’ve never seen before, they get like a minute to look at it and then they have to play it,” Maclin said.
This was Agada’s first go around at JRO, a process which he had been declined for in the past. With that being said, he described the process being much simpler for him and the other freshman with their current experience.
“It was relatively easy for me, mostly because I’m a ninth grader. It was kind of, for lack of a better phrase, I guess, bot lobbies? Apologies to the others,” Agada said.
The auditionees were given a piece of music to practice beforehand. Brightman, a violinist, referred to his practice as rigorous training.
“I sightread all of the pieces of music so that I’d be ready for sight reading, those are particularly hard,” Brightman said. “I practiced my scales and then I also practiced the piece that they gave us.”
All three freshmen have four or more years of experience with their instruments, and have been competing since the sixth grade.
“I’ve been playing since the sixth grade. I have four and a half years of pretty good experience,” Davis said
As a final note, Maclin seemed extremely proud of her students this year.
“I would just like to say I’m really proud of my students for auditioning and taking that giant leap of preparing and putting themselves out there,” Maclin said, “An audition is just one snapshot of performance, and sometimes you make it, sometimes you don’t, and I’m really excited to have three ninth graders from Clover Hill participating this summer.”
