Interview with Caleb Ahn | Jersey Surf Audition

I spoke with Caleb Ahn, a senior at Freedom High School in Virginia and talked to him about how his first audition camp with the Jersey Surf Drum and Bugle Corps.

1. What encouraged you to audition for Jersey Surf?

It was one of my close friends who encouraged me to audition for drum corps. After he marched a year of Jersey Surf in 2014 and came back with these crazy stories, I started to watch a lot of drum corps shows (in person and on YouTube) and really got into DCI myself. I've wanted to audition ever since, and this was the first year that my parents decided to let me audition.

2. How did you feel walking into the Jersey Surf Camp for the first time? Was it overwhelming? Were you intimidated at all?

Walking into the Surf camp for the first time, I was really nervous. There were tons of tiny groups of vets being reunited and I felt really out of place. People had told me all about DCI camps and what to expect, but it was a totally different thing to experience it myself. I was super overwhelmed, but that didn't last for long because I arrived relatively early to camp and was put to work unloading horns with some other people who were also auditioning on mellophone.

3. What was your day like on Saturday?

Saturday didn't get off to that great of a start for me. I overestimated the 15 minutes from wake-up to PT and was a bit late with a couple other rookies (whoops). But things got better after breakfast. The hornline broke up into sectionals for the majority of the day, and I got to know the rest of the mellos and the mello tech really well.

4. What was the audition process like? Was it competitive? What did you prepare for the staff?

The audition, like the staff reassured us throughout the entire weekend, was super laid back...or rather, it would have been if I wasn't so nervous. The friend I mentioned before helped me pick out my lyrical and technical pieces that I needed for my audition, and we settled on the theme and variation 1 from Aria con Variazioni. I messed up so much during the audition, but from that, I got great advice from the staff on ways I could improve my playing for the December camp.

5. How was it working with the Jersey Surf Staff?

Learning from the Jersey Surf Staff was so much fun. They're great teachers and pushed me harder over the course of that weekend than I've ever been pushed before. The mellophone tech Becky was especially awesome. She was really nice and patient with me and throughout the weekend, I noticed improvement in myself just from her instruction.

6. What was your favorite part of the weekend?

My favorite part of the weekend had to have been the time when the mellophones where walking back from our sectionals to the cafetorium where the rest of the hornline was already playing. Just walking in the hall listening to that beautiful music was so surreal and I had this moment where I realized, "oh man. I'm actually doing this. I'm really at a DCI camp."

7. Here's the most important question: How's the food?

Ah the food. I wasn't expecting very much, but the food at the Jersey Surf camp was pretty top-notch (I mean, who doesn't love hashbrowns, eggs, and bacon for breakfast??).

8. What advice would you give to a rookie auditioning for their first season in these upcoming months?

I guess the advice I would give to someone auditioning for DCI soon is to: 1) be confident in yourself and your preparations. Don't psych yourself out during the audition like I did. 2) Enjoy the audition camp! Put yourself out there and don't be afraid to meet new people

Thank you for your time, Caleb! Corps Writers International wishes you the best of luck and we hope you'll be looking at a contract real soon!