If she hasn’t already found a position, tell her to try out again. You never know when you’re going to have the audition of your life, so she should keep trying if that’s what she wants.
It is competitive and most, but not all, members of the military bands based in DC are graduates of music conservatories with master’s degrees.
There are military field bands all over the world, but they require more soldiering than the elite ones do.
Some of the elite bands (President’s Own Marine Band, Navy Band at Annapolis, Pershing’s Own, e.g.) are music only, but I believe all but the President’s Own still require some military training-not sure which ones. The President’s Own requires no military training, but there are strict health and weight requirements.
Even the military bands have suffered severe funding cutbacks. Tours have been cut in half from what they were a few years ago and personnel have been cut (at this point, retirements have sufficed for this). So the opportunities in this area are much less than they used to be, hence more competitive.
My niece has a Masters in performance. She is currently a member of an Ensemble in Pittsburgh and they are recording original music and doing concerts. I think at this point she does not want to move to another city. I think she is still trying to get on with the Pittsburgh symphony and do studio work.
There are military field bands all over the world, but they require more soldiering than the elite ones do.
Some of the elite bands (President’s Own Marine Band, Navy Band at Annapolis, Pershing’s Own, e.g.) are music only, but I believe all but the President’s Own still require some military training-not sure which ones. The President’s Own requires no military training, but there are strict health and weight requirements.
My niece a very talented flutist tried out for one of the military bands and didn’t make the cut. It must be tough competition because she played a solo with the first chair flutist in the Pitssburg symphony in high school.
If I am not mistaken, while members of some of the elite military bands don’t have to undergo the most grueling basic military training and aren’t likely to be deployed to a combat unit, all are still members of the military and it still entails military life and all that comes with it, good and bad even if they some have a more flexible assignment. FWIU, you can’t audition as a civilian for a military band and expect to remain a civilian.
Many moons ago, my husband was good friends with a fellow he marched with in civilian (DCA) Drum & Bugle corps. IIRC, his friend was a graduate of Peabody Institute in Baltimore with a Masters in Music Theory and was a very talented trumpet player. He auditioned for the Army Band several times before he finally got a spot but had to “enlist” and had to undergo the rigors of basic training and after several years in the DC area, got shipped off to a base in Germany where he spent the next 8 years along with his wife and then small children.
When he came back state side, he was transferred and stationed in the Virginia Beach area (what was then Fort Story, now the Joint Expeditionary Base East) at the U.S. Army School of Music and he got in touch with my husband and invited us down for the weekend. Super nice guy – really nice family.
They had housing right off but very close to the base and the beach and he and his wife took us on a tour of the base which was especially cool as they were having a base “open house” that weekend – lots of military displays and demonstrations for the public. And this military installation was not just an Army base but also had Navy and Naval Air corps personnel IIRC. But being that we were staying with and being accompanied around the base by an Army sergeant, we got to tour some places that other civilian tourists didn’t, including a tour of his office and the school of music.
His Army “job” by then was not performing music anymore but teaching music theory at the school and scoring musical arrangements and even composing a few original pieces of music, mostly original Jazz pieces for various US Army bands (and I think also for Navy and Marine Corps bands) that were perform all over the world.
He loved his “job” as he was doing what he loved, but he also explained to us that he was still active duty Army. We got there late on a Friday night and after having a light dinner, he went off to bed explaining that he had to get up very early the next morning to complete his required weekly 10 mile run. He also explained that while he loved the VA Beach area and wanted to stay there and he had enough time in and rank and a specialized skill, that it wasn’t likely he’d be shipped off to some back water base, nothing in the military was guaranteed and even back then (mid 1980’s) – funding and budget cuts were a concern.