America's Got Talent

Last week, Fermata Town received an email inquiry from a producer from the NBC series America’s Got Talent. They had come across a few youtube clips of Fermata Town and wanted to know more about the group because they loved our sound. After replying to their email with a little more information about the group which included our history and a little bit about our year in 2012, they called us up wanting to know when we could come in and audition for the show.

I know! We got asked to audition for America’s Got Talent by a producer! So cool and very exciting!

They would be holding auditions in New York City on Tuesday, Feb. 26 and wanted to know if we could make an evening time slot. Auditions would consist of around a 20-30 minute meet and greet with the producers in which they would ask us all questions to try and get a feel for the group. Following the meet and greet, we would be asked to sing a song as if we were on the air. So 90 seconds, give it all you’ve got… GO!

Sounds fun, right?! Absolutely!

Now for the not so fun part…

We scrambled to try and make the arrangements for this day trip to occur but quickly realized it was going to be very challenging under the short notice. As we tried to juggle our meetings around, find coverage from our departments, and think of great excuses to not be around for an afternoon, it became clear that things like this were going to be extremely difficult for a semi-professional group like Fermata Town.

11 of our 15 were on board for the trip and we were able to also get three alumni to lend a hand (voice). But after talking it over at our last rehearsal the group came to the conclusion that these scheduling conflicts were not going to disappear. If we were to make it past the producers round in an audition, would we be able to get more time off for the taping round in front of the judges? And then could we afford to take vacation time to fly out to LA for the TV round if we continued to advance? I guess this is all wishful thinking, but definitely something that we needed to think about. If we were going to commit, we wanted to do exactly that and it was a tough decision but ultimately we decided that the timing was just not right for this audition.

Had it been in Boston… Done! We’re there! Had it been on a weekend… Done! See ya soon America! But unfortunately, for a group like us made up of working professionals and full time graduate students, time is something we don’t have a lot of.

So when you watch (if you watch) America’s Got Talent this year and you find yourself thinking, hmmm Fermata Town should audition for this show… we could have but it just wasn’t in the cards this year.

Until next year, NBC.