Ok, an update on the exam which happened this morning at 10:30am.
I arrived in good time at the centre and warmed up for 10 mins in a side room after signing in and showing ID. There was a grade 1 piano student in before me which lasted 10 minutes, the steward then ushered me into the examination room and introduced me to my examiner. A lovely chap who was over the moon to see a saxophone on his list for the day (the other 15 exams for the day were all piano).
He asked which pieces I’d be playing and allowed me time to set up speaker etc, thereafter we did all of the scales required for the exam and then went straight into the played 3 pieces.
The rest of the exam which consisted of the aural tests, rhythm and creative response (improv) was very pleasant, not at all harrowing 🥴 and went great. I thought I made a good job of improvising in Fmaj after the required played bars
There was a good chat about my playing tone, which he liked very much and we talked about jazz influences, players I liked listening to etc and why tenor over alto etc..
His parting words were “Thank you, that was a very nice first exam”
My mistakes were….
1)Fluffed a note or two during ‘Over the Rainbow’ and quickly recovered.
2) Had a couple of attempts for one of the rhythm clapping parts and very unexpectedly was asked to play an improvised tune in that rhythm.
3) May have played a wrong note in one of the arpeggios 😖
Results should be available at the end of the week.
Thanks for the advice earlier on all 👍