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Preliminary Auditions: October 12-13, 2025
Semifinal Auditions: October 13, 2025
Final Auditions: October 14, 2025
The audition will take place at the North Carolina Symphony’s home, Meymandi Concert Hall, in downtown Raleigh. All rounds will be screened. Musicians taking this audition should only do so with the intention of accepting the position if it is offered.
The repertoire list can be found here. Please check frequently as it is subject to change.
Please click here to submit your application for this audition. We will be in touch with more information around the application deadline.
Please direct all audition communications to auditions@ncsymphony.org.
Applications must be received by September 1, 2025.
The 2025/26 season is 40 weeks, plus 18 optional summer services at the position per-service rate. The minimum salary for section position is $1,788.69/week ($71,547.60 annual/40 wks, plus EMG and Ancillary payments). Benefits include 9% employer retirement contribution – 403 (b), medical, life and instrument insurance.
Intended employment to begin in January 2026, or at the earliest mutually agreed upon date.
Preliminary Auditions: November 9-10, 2025
Semifinal Auditions: November 10, 2025
Final Auditions: November 11, 2025
The audition will take place at the North Carolina Symphony’s home, Meymandi Concert Hall, in downtown Raleigh. All rounds will be screened. Musicians taking this audition should only do so with the intention of accepting the position if it is offered.
The repertoire list can be found here when it becomes available. Please check frequently as it is subject to change.
Please click here to submit your application for this audition. We will be in touch with more information around the application deadline.
Please direct all audition communications to auditions@ncsymphony.org.
Applications must be received by September 29, 2025.
The 2025/26 season is 40 weeks, plus 18 optional summer services at the position per-service rate. The minimum salary for section position is $1,788.69/week ($71,547.60 annual/40 wks, plus EMG and Ancillary payments). Benefits include 9% employer retirement contribution – 403 (b), medical, life and instrument insurance.
Intended employment to begin in January 2026, or at the earliest mutually agreed upon date.
THE ORGANIZATION
The mission of the North Carolina Symphony is to be North Carolina’s State orchestra, an orchestra achieving the highest level of artistic quality and performance standards and embracing its dual legacies of statewide service and music education.
Founded in 1932, the North Carolina Symphony (NCS) is a vital and honored component of North Carolina’s cultural life. Led by Grammy Award-winning Music Director Carlos Miguel Prieto, the professional musicians of the orchestra serve the 100 North Carolina counties each year, with more than 300 concerts, education programs, and community engagement offerings reaching adults and schoolchildren—in large and small communities—and in concert halls, auditoriums, gymnasiums, restaurants, clubs, and outdoor settings. NCS is proud to expand access to audiences around the globe through concerts and educational offerings available through the digital space.
NCS’s state headquarters venue is the spectacular Meymandi Concert Hall at the Martin Marietta Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Raleigh. The Symphony’s service across the state includes series in Chapel Hill, Wilmington, New Bern, and Moore County, as well as the Summerfest series at its summer home, the outdoor Koka Booth Amphitheatre in Cary. NCS brings some of the world’s greatest talents to North Carolina and embraces home-state artists from classical musicians to bluegrass bands, creating live music experiences distinctive to North Carolina. NCS is dedicated to giving voice to new art and has presented more than 50 U.S. or world premieres in its history.
Committed to engaging students of all ages across North Carolina, NCS leads one of the most extensive education programs of any symphony orchestra in the country—serving over 150,000 students each year. In alignment with the curriculum set by the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction, the Symphony provides training and resources for teachers, sends small ensembles into classrooms, and presents full-orchestra in-person and online Education Concerts that bring the fundamentals of music to life. Music Discovery for preschoolers combines music with storytelling, and at the middle and high school levels, students have opportunities to work directly with NCS artists and perform for NCS audiences.
The North Carolina Symphony is an equal opportunity employer. Employment decisions are based solely on the individual’s qualifications, merit, experience, and performance. NCS is proud to be a partner orchestra of the National Alliance for Audition Support.
THE AREA
The Symphony’s home base of Raleigh is the state’s capital, located in the Piedmont (central) region of North Carolina. Raleigh is the largest city in a 3,500 square mile Metropolitan area known as the Triangle (Raleigh / Durham / Chapel Hill) and is among the fastest-growing cities in the US. Raleigh is located approximately 140 miles from the Appalachian highlands and 130 miles from the Atlantic Coast, making the ease of a day trip to the mountains or the beach a unique benefit of living here. Located within the area is Research Triangle Park, home to several corporate and regional headquarters: Fidelity Investments, Duke Health, IBM, Red Hat, SAS, GlaxoSmithKline, and Cisco all have large presences, to name a few.
The home of many creative and well-educated citizens, Raleigh has been lauded as a “Best City for Business and Careers” by Fortune magazine and a “Best Place to Live in America” by Money magazine. It provides its people and businesses with a world-class combination of economic vitality, low unemployment, tremendous educational opportunity, environmental quality, and exceptional quality of life. The park system offers a vast network of recreational greenway trails that connect neighborhoods, and the housing market continues to be strong compared to national averages.
Thirteen institutions of higher education provide affordable and premium educational opportunities for adult and extension classes and a well-educated citizenry of students, graduates, and faculty. The Triangle is also an area of tremendous resources where cultural and performing arts organizations thrive. Other major institutions include the North Carolina Museum of Art, North Carolina Museum of History, Carolina Ballet, North Carolina Opera, American Dance Festival, Ackland Art Museum, Nasher Art Museum, Marbles Kids Museum, North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Morehead Planetarium, and Carolina Performing Arts at UNC-Chapel Hill. There are film, music, dance and crafts festivals, local theater groups, and touring Broadway shows.
The Triangle is also a vital sports center. It is host to the NHL’s Stanley Cup-winning Carolina Hurricanes, minor league baseball’s Durham Bulls, and the sports programs of ACC members Duke University, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University.