Ha Lim Shon traveled from South Korea to audition for admission to Peabody's graduate program. Peabody alumnus Michael Sheppard accompanies.

There's probably no moment that better captures the essence of audition week at Peabody than when Emily Wagner, a high school senior from Connecticut, wrapped up her 15-minute guitar audition for the undergraduate program with three jazz teachers last winter. It was February 22, Day Two of the weeklong event, and the bespectacled Emily—dressed in loafers, gray slacks, and a blue sweater—had first cruised through a light-jazz tune backed by a recording featuring musician friends of hers. Wagner grew up in a musical household, where, along with guitar, she took up piano and violin. But when it comes to auditions, "I really like playing for jazz people in general," she says, "because they tend to be much more laid back and fun."

And, indeed, the Peabody instructors in the jazz studio that February day exuded an easygoing vibe. When they asked Wagner to finish up by running through a couple of half-diminished scales, she had a few false starts, faltering more than once before finally completing the task.

"I'm a perfectionist," Wagner recalled afterward. "So that moment, I wish I could take back. But the response of the room, overall, was positive. And he did say, 'Don't worry, you're good.'"

"He" is Paul Bollenback, a guitar teacher who, along with Gary Thomas (director of jazz studies) and Michael Formanek (bass), auditioned a string of candidates. Before Wagner arrived, the three faculty members, seated in three chairs at the front of the jazz studio, screened an audio audition of another guitarist, a young man from the Florida Everglades. Bollenback, looking Beatnikesque in a black turtleneck and goatee, described what he looks for in a Peabody jazz candidate, who, like those applying to other departments, must not only audition but also take diagnostics and theory tests and interview with department heads.

"For jazz, because you're talking about something that's more like spontaneous composition than interpretation, I'm looking for a good concept of sound, an even musical touch, and an understanding of basic jazz harmony and vocabulary, which they need to understand for improvisation," he explained. "And it helps if they can read well, because that, for electric guitar, is a particular problem, even for professional players."

Not for Emily Wagner, it turns out. When, like her counterparts—auditioning for spots in the voice, orchestra, keyboard, and other departments—she was notified of audition-week results April 1, the news was positive. She was offered a slot, which she happily accepted.

But not everyone roaming Peabody's halls—and warming fingers or tuning strings or stretching vocal cords—that week would end up in the same spot. As the Conservatory's dean, Mellasenah Morris, pointed out, 1,500 candidates were vying for 300 spots, at the undergraduate and graduate levels, many as part of a tour of multiple schools. "That's a lot of pressure," said Morris, who, as a Peabody alumna and the mother of a young woman who also went through the process, knows. "For many people, it's a matter of traveling to seven, eight, nine places. That's tiring and expensive, and you're sitting there, realizing there's steep competition. We do everything we can to try and relax people going into the auditions."

At the end of the day, says Dean Mellasenah Morris, Peabody is looking for something in its students that can be hard to quantify: passion—not just a love of instrument but for music in general.

Packing hundreds of auditions into just one week was a decision made more than 20 years ago, so that all of Peabody's personnel—administrators, faculty, and students—could "focus solely on the next class to enter Peabody," Morris, who also serves as deputy director of the Peabody Institute, told the almost 100 parents gathered in Friedberg Hall for an early morning orientation session. Morris, a classical pianist whose wood-paneled office includes a bust of Franz Schubert, taught at Peabody for two decades, then spent a couple more as an administrator at three other schools before landing back in Baltimore in 2008, where one of her many duties is supervising audition week. Beforehand, she recounted what she felt like as a parent shepherding a child through the process. "It's your baby," she said. "You've been there with the child, filling out tons of applications for numerous schools. It's harder, I think, on the parent than it is on the child."

With that in mind, she was shuttling between auditions when she ran into one woman who seemed a bit flustered as she waited, alongside a violin-toting teenager, for an elevator.

"Are you a parent?" she asked.

"Yes," the woman replied.

"Lots of auditions, lots of traveling?"

"Yes. It's kind of getting to be old-hat at this point."

"Do you breathe?" Morris asked, following with a chuckle.

"I'm working on it. I'm working on trying to breathe."

During the orientation, David Lane, Peabody's director of admissions, asked the parents how many had children auditioning at anywhere from one to half a dozen schools. Hands shot up. One mother, after everyone else had raised theirs, blurted, "Eleven!" And, as Lane pointed out, the families were coming from all over the country, with one third showing up from such far-flung locales as China and South Korea.

What distinguishes the 154-year-old Peabody Institute, noted Director Jeff Sharkey, is "a balance of breadth and depth." Even if a student's aim, long term, is to teach music, she's expected to master an instrument as any professional would.

On the other hand, focusing solely on performance, he said, would not be wise. Headlines and tweets tell of symphony orchestras canceling seasons, taking pay cuts, filing for bankruptcy. "There are seismic shifts in the role of the musician," he said. "Where I feel we come into our own is in the breadth we have." Peabody is a member of "the 600 club," a small group of conservatories exceeding 600 students. "What that full size gets us," Sharkey said, "is a range of study." Jazz, early music, recording arts and sciences, orchestral, piano, voice—it's "all under one roof."

Because of its connection to Johns Hopkins University, Peabody is also rich in resources, enabling students to take double majors and major-minor combinations that mix music with other subjects.

Which brings us back to Emily Wagner. She plans to major in both music and recording arts and sciences so that she can master jazz guitar while pursuing her dream of designing concert spaces. In mid-April, before she informed Peabody she'd enroll in the fall, she returned to campus for another look. "I wanted to check it out again, just to make sure," she explained. "So I asked Scott Metcalfe [director of the recording arts and sciences program] if we could have a tour. He gave me and my parents a personal tour. He was really helpful, and my parents were very impressed."

Through the dual-degree program, Wagner will study jazz under Bollenback and take electrical engineering, math, and science classes at Johns Hopkins' Whiting School of Engineering. Noting that she applied to three other music schools, she says, "I couldn't find anything else like that anywhere else."

After the parents' orientation, Morris wended her way through the school's hallways, greeting visitors with a smile and checking in with Peabody student volunteers, many wearing yellow T-shirts emblazoned with Mr. Peabody, the cartoon dog from Rocky and Bullwinkle, and the words, "Can I help you?"

Her first stop: vocal auditions. Two tenors, both from South Korea and seeking admission to the graduate program, sang back-to-back for half a dozen teachers whose desks faced a wooden floor, on which each singer stood alongside a grand piano played by a Peabody student. First up was Ha Lim Shon, a lean young man dressed in a charcoal-gray suit. He sang just about flawlessly, his eyes fixed on the judges, one of whom gave Morris a handwritten note on which she'd listed the hurdles he'd cleared—the high C, the lyrics, the French—accompanied by "YES!" He was followed by Ki-Taek Song, stout and wearing a blue shirt, his voice huskier, the delivery heartfelt.

Afterward, Morris said, "They were both first-rate. I could tell the judges were impressed." But final judgment would have to wait. Each set of judges, teachers within a department, abides by a strict procedure—referencing a student's file (application form, academic record, letters of recommendation) while taking notes and, eventually, rating the student from 1 to 10, "10 being phenomenal," Morris explained. Even a high score, however, isn't the last word. "You might start out thinking that this person's a 10, and then you hear somebody else who knocks your socks off and think, 'That's the 10.'"

Judges from another Peabody department offered a study in how intense their job is. As nervous as students are before auditions, the half-dozen piano judges scattered across the back rows of Goodwin Hall were facing several hours' worth of candidates, at 10-minute auditions each. Morris sat in on two auditions—the first delivered by Ji Min Lee, whose hair bun threatened to come loose as she worked her way through pieces by Bach and Beethoven, her hands flying. Lee did, however, keep one ear tuned to department chair Boris Slutsky, who occasionally tapped a pen on a seat back to request specific pieces.

Then curly-haired Robert Fleitz, sporting sideburns and a maroon shirt, took the stage as the judges scribbled away, a few occasionally murmuring among themselves.

The judges look for versatility, someone who can handle pieces across periods, from Bach to the Romantics and beyond. Fleitz, said Morris, seemed to enjoy playing Liszt. And Lee was able, when asked, to transition smoothly from Schumann to a Bach fugue.

The faculty members, of course, still had a long day ahead of them. How, exactly, do they make it?

Morris considered the question, then said: "Passion for what they're doing, a big interest in what their studios will look and feel like next year, and just sheer dedication."

Before arriving at the jazz studio, Morris ran into a Peabody senior, William Scott, who, like many others, was standing in line in the Ruth Blaustein Rosenberg Lobby.

"What's this?" she asked.

"Placement testing, to see how good our ears are," said Scott, a good-natured, T-shirt-wearing guy otherwise known as "Buddy." "I haven't had ear training in, like, three years, though," he added with a chuckle.

Morris laughed and said, "You use it every day, right?"

Set to graduate with a bachelor's in harpsichord performance, Scott was applying for a master's in music education. He grew up in Baltimore, attended the Baltimore School for the Arts, and is the son of two retired police officers. Although he doesn't plan to give up performing, he discovered another passion, thanks to a program at his high school alma mater through which he teaches music to Baltimore middle-schoolers.

"I really do enjoy teaching. It's very gratifying," he said recently, after hearing he'd been accepted into the master's program. "My Peabody teachers encouraged me to go into education, and I especially like that middle-school age, because the students aren't so full of themselves. They're open to learning."

And music, which is neglected during trying economic times, needs more advocates, he added. "When I was a [middleand high-school] student, I didn't get very good grades in English or math, but I excelled at music. That was what I was good at. So I'm thinking if there are any other kids out there not good at math or English, music might be the answer."

Of course, not everyone who auditions—and even auditions well—makes it into Peabody.

After Emily Wagner's audition, Morris dropped in on saxophone teacher Gary Louie, who was auditioning the last of 20 students vying for just two spots in his classical saxophone class. The tall, trim Tyler Wiessner, who'd traveled with his parents from nearby Ellicott City, wore a suit and tie. As he played through a piece he'd picked for the audition, Wiessner sounded fluid and confident. Louie then accompanied him on piano, to test his ear and improvisation skills. He also punctuated just about every one of Wiessner's performances with, "Nice, very nice."

Saxophone faculty member Gary Louie auditioned 20 students for just two spots.

Louie, whose professorial sweater and slacks were balanced by a boyish-looking face, also took time to chat about his class. He said that Wiessner, who'd never played alto sax before, would have to learn the instrument, for reasons other than diversity. "I've got to think about you six years or eight years down the road," he explained. "You may want to teach in college someday. And if you want to do that, you have to know alto and the incredible amount of repertoire there." The teenager listened politely and even inquired about taking lessons with Louie over the summer, no matter what the outcome.

"There are two things, as teachers, we're trying to assess during auditions: One is talent load, and the other is training," Louie explains, after the audition. Talent, which covers everything from dexterity to the ability to "say something" while performing, is usually apparent. But training is harder to determine—hence the need to ask those auditioning to play only parts of pieces from various periods and genres. And it's crucial at a young age, Louie says, because without knowing the fundamentals, an 18-year-old musician is going to have a tough time mastering truly challenging pieces.

As it turns out, Wiessner did not end up getting one of the coveted two spots. Making the decision as to who's in, and who's not, is one that Louie says is very difficult—particularly when dealing with an applicant like Tyler. "He's got a nice sound, and he's a smart kid," said Louie. "And he was nice, and personality is a big deal in my class."

At the end of the day, said Morris and others, Peabody is looking for something in its students that can be hard to quantify: passion—not just a love of instrument but for music in general. Louie, who still performs but makes his living teaching, says he could never just do just one or the other. He and his colleagues at Peabody "call it a patchwork career," Louie says. "You know, Bach had a patchwork career. Chopin taught lessons. It's what we do."

In fact, Louie co-teaches a "business of music" course, which covers the many ways in which musicians can earn a living. For classical saxophonists, that includes performing in venues smaller than concert halls—clubs, for instance, a trend that's taken hold over the past decade, according to Louie.

As teachers, he says, "our hearts go out to them"—students who come to audition. "We've been there; we know what it's like. And that continues through their time at Peabody. We really believe that being a musician is a lifestyle. It's not cut-and-dried; it's a process, a way of approaching life."