Directors

General Information

Colorado All State Orchestra 2025 will be at the University Center for the Arts in Fort Collins February 6-8. All participating schools must be CHSAA Members, and the director(s) must be an active NAfME member. The audition fee is $35, and the participation fee is $65 per student.

Chaperone Information

All students are required to be chaperoned at Colorado All State Orchestra at all times. It is not acceptable for students to be at the event without an adult. The Chaperone designation form can be found here. Please return this to chair, Tom Nugent.

Directors Only - Registration Payment

Audition Process

Registration will open for Colorado All State Orchestra Auditions in September. Directors must register themselves before their students will be able to register.

Director Registration

Directors, your NAfME membership must be up-to-date in order for your students to audition and participate in ASO. Additionally your school must be a CHSAA Sanctioned School or in the process of becoming one.

In order for students to be eligible to participate in ASO, they must be enrolled in a performing ensemble within your programs for the entire year. Standard eligibility rules also apply (grades and number of credits).

IMPORTANT: Submitting directors must make the payment for all ASO fees such as the Audition and Registration fees. It is up to directors to collect money if students are paying for themselves. No students or parents should be paying for this. The payment link is not to be shared with parents or students. No refunds will be issued for double payments. The audition fee is $35.

For your planning purposes, all participating students will need to be chaperoned at all times by a person designated by the school - this may be a teacher, administrator, parent volunteer or other school employee. We understand the challenges that this presents and appreciate your efforts to plan ahead for this.

Auditions are due Friday, November 15 @ 5PM and are submitted by the director. Auditions may be submitted beginning September 18. For schools submitting a significant number of auditions, it is advisable to aim for your students to submit their recordings to you early in order to give you enough time to organize the recordings and submit them before the deadline.

The audition process follows these steps:

1. Director Registration

2. Student registration

3. Directors will receive a confirmation email when a student has registered and may log in to the director portal to see the students who have registered.

Director Portal

4. Students submit recordings to directors (or directors help students make recordings)

5. Director listens to auditions to ensure that the recording is in fact your student and that all materials are present. Students caught submitting dishonest recordings may be deemed ineligible to audition in the future. Schools with repeated dishonest recordings that are not caught by the director may lose eligibility.

6. Directors submit the each student’s audition in one mp3 file.

Audition Guidelines

Audio ONLY audition recordings (mp3 files only) must be submitted by the director in the following format:

All required audition material must be included in one file in the following order: Scales, Orchestral Excerpts, Solo Selection (Solo selection is for strings and piano only). Solo selection should be between 2 and 2.5 minutes in length. Only one file including all audition requirements should be submitted per applicant. There should not be any speaking on the recording. Do NOT announce the student name.
String players may refer to the standard literature lists for solo ideas. Pianists may choose whichever solo they would like. It should showcase technique and musicality. Piano solos are not rated based on difficulty. String solos are rated based on difficulty. Please see our policies page for more information on string solos. It is NEVER a good idea to play a solo that is too hard to earn the points associated with it. Playing a solo that is at your level well gives you the best chance of making All State Orchestra.
Audition recordings must be recorded without accompaniment and without a metronome. Recordings must also be unedited with no added “overdubs,” reverb, or pitch correction. You may splice together separate recordings of each scale, excerpt, and solo, but please do not edit the individual elements. This type of editing will be considered a dishonest audition and may forfeit eligibility.
Mp3 files must be compressed at a bitrate of no more than 256 kbps. Files larger than 20MB will not be accepted. Consider that the quality of the audition recording may reasonably affect the perception of the adjudicators.
Video submissions will not be accepted.
The audition fee is $35 and can be paid online by the director. It must be paid online November 17th.

NOTE: Students can submit auditions on multiple instruments for no additional fee. We require separate auditions for flute and piccolo.

Students will be adjudicated based on the rubric linked on the audition page, which is a blank example. Completed rubrics with feedback will be emailed to the director prior to the event.