Conservatorium Auditions
88% of JWA’s 2024 auditioners got into Sydney Conservatorium
In 2024, 17 Jazz Workshop Australia students auditioned for the jazz performance degree at Sydney Conservatorium of Music. Fifteen were accepted. A sixteenth student was accepted into Berklee College of Music in Boston.
That result is not an anomaly. Since 2020 alone, more than thirty JWA students have been accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium jazz program, with others gaining entry to classical and composition studies and to international institutions including Berklee and Manhattan School of Music. Across JWA’s history, more than sixty alumni have gone on to study jazz at the Sydney Conservatorium, among them bassists Jacob Graham, Henry Hall, and Jacques Emery, saxophonists Damon Poppleton and Chiara Minotto, drummers Alexander Inman-Hislop and Holly Conner, and pianists Emma Stephenson and Jacob Jayasena.
If you are a serious young musician with ambitions to study jazz at university, this page is for you. It covers the tertiary options available in Australia, what the Sydney Conservatorium auditions actually require, and how JWA can help you prepare.
Tertiary jazz study in Australia
Sydney Conservatorium of Music
The Sydney Conservatorium jazz performance degree is the most competitive jazz course in NSW and the benchmark against which others are measured. It is part of the University of Sydney, which means students have access to the full breadth of a research university, including the option to combine their music degree with studies in another discipline. The minimum ATAR for entry is 70, but that figure is largely beside the point: the audition is the real gate. A student with a strong ATAR but weak jazz skills will not be accepted. A student who plays well and is ready will be.
Other options
Beyond Sydney, there are other programs worth serious consideration. WAAPA at Edith Cowan University in Perth, VCA at the University of Melbourne, and Monash University’s music program, also in Melbourne, all have strong faculties and are well regarded in Australian jazz education. JWA has had students accepted into each, and students willing to relocate should look at all three seriously.
Good options also include the Brisbane Conservatorium, Adelaide Conservatorium, and JMI in Brisbane. Study abroad is a real pathway too, with JWA alumni accepted into Berklee College of Music and Manhattan School of Music, two of the most respected jazz schools in the world.
Non-university pathways
You do not have to study jazz at university to build a career in music, and plenty of professional musicians never did. But it is worth understanding what the university route provides beyond formal training. The Conservatorium in particular creates a cohort, a network of peers, friendships, and professional relationships that forms during those years of study and shapes who works with whom for decades afterwards. Players who come up outside that network, however skilled, can find it genuinely difficult to break into those circles. That is simply the reality of how scenes work. For many serious young musicians, the social and professional infrastructure of a good music degree matters at least as much as the curriculum.
The Sydney Conservatorium audition: what you need to know
The audition is approximately 15 minutes long and consists of four components, plus a written Jazz Aptitude Test held separately on the same day. You will be accompanied throughout by faculty pianist and bass players.
Jazz auditions are typically held in September. Check the Sydney Conservatorium admissions page to confirm current dates and registration deadlines before you make plans.
Who the course is for
The course is designed for serious performers who can already play jazz at a high standard and are ready to build on that with a view to a professional career. It is primarily a vocational and practical degree, with a focus on performance and rigorous professional preparation rather than deep academic study of musicology or music history. It is not a course for beginners or for musicians new to jazz. If you have not yet developed a foundation in improvisation, jazz repertoire, and ensemble playing, the audition is not the right next step, and building that foundation is.
What the audition requires
1. Repertoire
You will perform one jazz standard of your choice from the official list. The following is current as of 2026, but check the Conservatorium’s audition guide for any updates before you prepare: Autumn Leaves, All The Things You Are, Body and Soul, Close Your Eyes, Corcovado, Falling in Love with Love, I Love You, In A Mellow Tone, It Could Happen to You, On Green Dolphin Street, Stella By Starlight, Take The A Train, There is No Greater Love, There Will Never Be Another You, What Is This Thing Called Love, and Willow Weep for Me.
You will play the head and then improvise one or two choruses over the changes. The number depends on the tempo and the length of the form. You do not need to play the head out at the end.
Vocalists are the exception: they perform two standards in contrasting styles, one medium swing and one bossa nova or ballad, from a separate prescribed list.
2. Blues
You will improvise over a 12-bar blues across three consecutive chromatic keys, chosen by the panel on the day. No prepared melody is required. You go straight into your improvisation. Guitarists face a variation: three keys moving around the cycle of fourths rather than chromatically. This is more demanding than many candidates anticipate. You need to be genuinely fluent in the blues, not merely acquainted with it.
3. Sight reading
You will be given a jazz head you have not seen before, play it in an appropriate jazz style with the faculty accompanists, and then improvise a solo over the chord progression for one chorus. Guitarists and pianists are also expected to demonstrate accompanying skills behind a faculty member’s improvised solo.
4. Technical work
You will be asked to play major, jazz melodic minor, and harmonic minor scales in any or all of the twelve keys, and arpeggios across a range of chord types including major 7, dominant 7, minor 7, minor 7b5, diminished 7, and augmented, again in any key. Pianists must play scales and arpeggios hands together over two octaves and also prepare a short notated solo piece in any style. Guitarists work from CAGED system fingerings and are also required to demonstrate specific chord voicings including diatonic 1357 voicings and II-V-I shell voicings.
Drummers
Drummers have specific requirements that differ from other instruments. In the repertoire section, you will perform a jazz standard from the list in a trio setting: one chorus of the melody, one chorus accompanying a piano or guitar solo, and then a drum solo chorus over the form. You set the tempo. In the blues section, you will play four choruses of trio blues followed by four choruses of four-bar exchanges with the other players, at a tempo set by the panel. For technical work, you will be asked to demonstrate a range of stylistic grooves including bossa nova, mambo, ballad (brushes), medium swing (brushes), medium/fast swing (brushes), jazz waltz, and fast swing (sticks), assessed on rhythmic consistency, dynamic control, stylistic authenticity, and overall musicality.
The Jazz Aptitude Test
All in-person candidates sit a written test at 1:15pm on their audition day, covering musical knowledge and the ability to recognise intervals, chords, and rhythms by ear. This is a separate requirement from the performance audition and needs its own preparation. The minimum benchmark is approximately NSW 2-unit Music level or AMEB Level 6 Musicianship.
Video auditions
Candidates who live outside the Sydney metropolitan area, or who cannot attend in person, may submit a video audition instead. The video requirements differ from the live audition: a shorter repertoire list, technical work recorded in one continuous unedited take, and no Jazz Aptitude Test. Full details are set out in the official audition guide available from the Conservatorium’s audition portal.
Instrument competitiveness
As a general rule, the Conservatorium builds its intake around ensemble balance rather than ranking candidates purely by ability. This means some instruments are more competitive than others in a given year. Historically, saxophone and drums have been among the most competitive; trombone and double bass have at times been less so. That said, JWA has placed students into the Con on drums, bass, saxophone, trumpet, trombone, piano, and guitar, across the full range of instruments. Whatever you play, the best strategy is simply to be genuinely excellent.
Since JWA opened, more than sixty alumni have been accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium jazz course.
How JWA prepares students for conservatorium auditions
There is no shortcut. You are competing against musicians who have spent years developing their jazz skills, and the audition will reveal the depth, or shallowness, of your preparation quickly. If you come to us six weeks before the audition, we will do what we can, but we will be honest with you about your chances.
The students who succeed are the ones who started early and committed seriously. We recommend beginning no later than the start of Year 11. Students have prepared successfully from Year 12, but it is significantly harder and the margin for error is much smaller.
The combination that works
The most effective preparation combines private lessons with ensemble experience in a jazz combo. Private lessons build your individual technique, your knowledge of harmony and theory, your repertoire, and your improvisational fluency. But the skills that distinguish students in a conservatorium audition, including stylistic authenticity, aural fluency, comfort with real-time improvisation, and the ability to listen and respond in ensemble, develop most efficiently through actually playing jazz with other musicians.
JWA’s combos program provides exactly that. Students rehearse weekly in small ensembles of three to eight musicians, coached in repertoire, improvisation, and ensemble technique. For students preparing for an audition, we set aside specific time within combo rehearsals to work through their chosen standard and blues with a real band behind them. The difference between playing your audition pieces alone in a practice room and playing them in a functioning jazz band is substantial, and the audition panel will hear it.
If you already have a good jazz-focused private teacher elsewhere, joining a JWA combo alone can make a significant difference to your audition readiness.
What you will need to be able to do
As a guide, a student who is genuinely ready to audition for the Sydney Conservatorium should be able to:
- Improvise fluently over the changes of jazz standards, across a range of tempos and keys
- Play the blues convincingly and adaptably across different keys
- Sight-read jazz heads and improvise over chord progressions without preparation
- Play scales and arpeggios across all twelve keys with accuracy, fluency, and at speed
- Demonstrate stylistic awareness, including phrasing, articulation, and time feel appropriate to the repertoire
- Perform under pressure, in front of an audience, with unfamiliar accompanists
These are not things that develop in a few months. They are the product of sustained, well-directed practice over years.
About our track record
JWA was founded in 2007 by Dr Saul Richardson and Karen Richards. Dr Richardson has been teaching jazz since 1991, holds a PhD from the University of Sydney, where his doctoral research examined exactly what it means to play jazz well and how those skills are most effectively taught, and has lectured in jazz pedagogy at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music. He served as Australasian representative on the executive board of the International Association for Jazz Education, and is the author of JWA’s jazz performance levels syllabus.
Before JWA opened, Dr Richardson led the jazz program at North Sydney Boys’ High School, where the program became widely recognised in Australian school jazz education and produced numerous students who went on to study at the Sydney Conservatorium and WAAPA.
Since JWA opened, more than sixty alumni have been accepted into the Sydney Conservatorium jazz course. Others have gone on to WAAPA, VCA, Monash, Berklee College of Music, Manhattan School of Music, and institutions across Australia and abroad. You can find a fuller list on our alumni page.
Prepare with us
If you are serious about auditioning for the Sydney Conservatorium or another tertiary jazz program, get in touch. We will be straightforward with you about where you are, what you need to work on, and how long that realistically takes. The sooner you start, the better your chances.