Guild Auditions

[jdledell]

My wife and I have been teaching piano privately in our home for 30 years. We belong to the usual array of music organizations (NFMC, MEANJ, MTNA. ABRSM etc) but have put most of our energy into the Guild Auditions. We usually have 90 to 100 of our students participate and have served as an Audition Center for decades.

My perspective is the organization is shrinking and dying. They are having a significant problem getting enough Judges to adjudicate the auditions and we are having difficulty recruiting new teachers to join. This past week we received the new syllabus and noted a new requirement for the Regular HS Diploma that unless the students gets 4 out 5 phases marked Commendable(2 out of 3 for Social HS diploma) they will fail regardless of how well they performed their actual music. In other words the student could get a perfect score on their music selections and still fail because they screwed up the fingering on something like a Eb minor scale. In addition, lately, pieces of music that have been approved for HS diplomas for decades are now being rejected.

I am curious what other teachers think of the Guild Auditions and their current approach to "rules". We are getting disillusioned with Guild but are looking for other feedback.