Knocking on The Door

There’s a particular quiet that comes the night before a big audition. Not silence. The mind is still racing, the fingers still tapping patterns into tabletops, the melodies still looping endlessly in your head. A kind of stillness, deep beneath the nerves. A pause before the leap. I’m standing on the edge of that moment now.

Tomorrow, I’ll step into a room, a legendary space, to play for a panel of strangers who will decide whether years of practice, heartbreak, grit, and growth will open the door to the next chapter of my career. It’s the biggest audition of my life, and oddly enough, I’ve never felt more at peace.

I’ve been a musician for as long as I’ve been myself. There were conservatory halls and basement practice rooms. Cheap meals and expensive strings. The soaring concerts where everything clicked, and the ones where things went awry. I’ve been the soloist, the ensemble player, the teacher, the side-gig freelancer. I’ve lugged gear through rainstorms and played for audiences of five and five hundred. None of it has been easy.  All of it has been worth it.

This audition doesn’t erase the path behind me. It honors it. I’ve done enough auditions in my life to know that preparation is everything and perfection is a myth. There will always be that one note, that moment of hesitation, that slight dryness in the hands. What matters more is the intention behind the playing. The story. The voice. I’m not going into this audition to prove my worth. I already know it. That shift changes everything. It replaces fear with focus and pressure with purpose.

Let me be clear: I want this. Deeply. The opportunity on the other side of this audition could reshape everything in my life.  But even more than I want the job, I want to walk into that room knowing I’ve shown up fully. That I’ve done justice to the thousands of hours that brought me here. That I didn’t shrink from the moment.  Because making music at the highest level isn’t about being fully perfect.  It’s about being fully present.