The music layer
The other schedule
Andrew Perkins has been teaching teenagers for twenty-six years and knows precisely
what "I'll think about it" means.
Every adult in this building has revised their picture of Nick Mansour in the last eleven months.
One has not, and it is not because he is unimpressed. Perkins has been in a room with this kid four
days a week since he was fourteen, and he is the only person on staff who was already paying attention
during the two years when nobody else was.
He is also the only person in this archive who has never once described Nick Mansour as
surprising.
Here is what he sent on the second day of school. Note who is copied on it, and note that it is the
only email in this entire universe written by an adult trying to get ahead of a deadline rather
than explaining afterwards why one was missed.
From: Perkins, Andrew <aperkins@fentonschools.org>
To: Mansour, Nicholas <n.mansour27@fentonschools.org>
Cc: Janssen, Furhut
Subject: Fall audition timeline — please read this one for real
Tuesday, August 18, 2026 at 4:41 PM
Nick,
There is a schedule attached. Before you open it and decide it is too much, read this part
first.
The prescreen recordings for every school worth applying to fall between the first of November and the first of December. That is not a deadline I invented, it does not negotiate, and it does not move for a playoff
run. If we are doing this, the recording has to be made in October, which means the programme has
to be under your hands by the end of September, which means we start now.
You will notice I have kept it to three pieces and that one of them is something you already
play. I am not trying to bury you. I am trying to make this small enough that you cannot use the
size of it as the reason you didn't do it.
One further thing, and then I will stop. I have taught roughly nine hundred students.
Four of those could have made a living at it. You are one of the four. I am not telling
you that to flatter you. I am telling you because I do not believe anybody else in your life is in
a position to know it, and I would be failing at my job if I let you find out at twenty-five.
None of this is an argument against football. I watched the Linden game. I understood what I
was looking at, and I have not said one word about it in that building, because it is not my
building.
I will say one thing that is not about music and then never again. Two years ago you did
something enormous for that football programme before anybody there knew your name, and you did it
for free, and you did it for a year. I know because you did it in my band room during your lunch
hour, on my tables, and I did not ask what it was and you did not tell me. I am not raising it to
make a point about them. I am raising it because you are about to do the same thing to yourself
again with October, and I would like to be on record beforehand rather than afterwards.
Let me know by Friday. A no is an acceptable answer. A no is a considerably better answer than
a "probably."
— AP
1 attachment: FALL26_AUDITION_TIMELINE.pdf
Fall 2026 — Audition Preparation Timeline
A. N. Perkins · Instrumental Music · Fenton High School · Mansour, piano
| Aug 24 – Sep 6 | Programme locked. Three pieces: one Baroque, one Romantic, one twentieth century or a jazz standard with a written head. Bring me your choices. Do not ask me to choose them for you. |
| Sep 7 – Sep 27 | Under the hands. Not polished — under the hands. Minimum forty-five minutes a day, five days. I will not ask whether you did it. I will hear whether you did it. |
| Sep 28 – Oct 11 | Memory work, plus one run-through a week with me. |
| Oct 12 – Oct 25 | Record. Auditorium, two sessions, evenings. Ms. Delacroix is running audio and she is better at it than I am. |
| Nov 1 – Dec 1 | Prescreen submissions. Deadlines vary by school. The earliest I have found is November 1. |
| Dec – Feb | Live auditions, if invited. Travel. We would deal with that when it is real. |
Nick — the weekly hour is the
whole plan. If you cannot give me forty minutes a week during the season then this does not work and
we should both stop pretending it does. — AP
The thread
Mr. Perkins
iMessage · school-approved contact
Tuesday, Aug 18 · 8:14 PM
got the email. thank you for putting that together, that's a lot of work
It took me twenty minutes. Don't do that.
The thing where you thank somebody so thoroughly that you don't have to answer them.
Read 8:16 PM
Eleven minutes.
That isn't an answer either.
Thursday, Aug 20 · 4:50 PM
You were in the room third hour. I heard the Ellington. You have most of the head already.
i've been messing with it at night
Nicholas, that is my entire argument in one word.
You are learning repertoire at one in the morning because it is the only hour nobody has claimed. That is not sustainable and it is not how you would want to be playing it either.
i don't think thursdays are something i can actually give you. not during the season. thursday is walkthrough and it's the only day setzke lets us out early and it's the day the whole game plan actually goes straight in my head
and if i skip it i am worse on friday. not marginally. measurably
i'm not saying that as an excuse. i'm saying it because it's true and you asked for a real answer
Read 5:02 PM
Twenty-six minutes.
Thank you for saying it straight. I mean that.
I'll come in on Sundays. One to two. The building is open for custodial until three and I have a key.
It is one hour, it is twelve weeks, and I would rather spend it than watch you decide this by attrition. Take it or don't.
Three minutes.
sunday at 1. i'll be there
Good. Bring me your three pieces by the sixth.
And Nick — none of this is me asking you to give up football. I want to be very clear about that, because I know how I come across and I have a fair idea what you have decided I think.
Ha ha
Go to bed at a reasonable hour. And clean the pedal. There is field dirt on my pedal.
The other thread
Max Herzog has been in the jazz combo with him since their freshman year and is the second-best
musician in this building, which is a sentence that only means anything if you know who is first.
He asked Mr. Perkins for extra help on his own audition material in the spring of his sophomore
year, and again last October. Both times Perkins said he would see what he could do. Nothing was
scheduled either time.
Max
iMessage
Friday, Aug 21 · 6:33 PM
perkins is doing sundays with me. 1 to 2. for prescreens
i feel insane about it. that's his weekend
Read 6:33 PM
Forty-one minutes.
Read 7:19 PM
Two hours.
i'm going to say one thing and then i'm going to drop it, ok
i asked him for help twice. sophomore spring and then again in october. i emailed him both times. both times he said he would see what he could do and both times nothing came of it
and i'm not mad at you. i want to be really clear about that. i'm not mad at YOU
and you never asked him for a thing and he is handing you his sundays
Delivered
Nine minutes.
i didn't know you asked him
i know you didn't. that's kind of the thing
do you want me to bring it up with him
that would be so much worse. you get why that makes it worse right
9:48 PM
i shouldn't have brought it up. you being better than me isn't something you did to me
i'm serious, it's not. it's just true and i've known it since we were fourteen and it's fine
forget it. thursday combo?
i can't thursday. walkthrough
Read 9:52 PM
No reply.
max i can do sunday after perkins. like 2:30. we could run the ellington
Delivered 10:31 PM
Nothing further. Neither of them has raised it since. Four of six turned up for jazz combo that next Thursday; Max came, Nick did not.
Where this stands at Week 0. He has committed to Sundays, one to two, and has not chosen his
three pieces. Perkins has told exactly one other adult about the conservatory conversation and it was
not anybody on the football staff. Furhut Janssen received a copy of the email and has not answered.
The Max thread is unresolved and stays unresolved for several weeks. Neither of them did
anything wrong. Perkins does not know the conversation happened. Nick has told nobody, including
Tommy — because telling Tommy would be a betrayal of Max, which he worked out inside about four
seconds, which is why he hasn't.
And the loaded gun. Perkins wrote the 2026 marching show himself over the summer, which he
does not normally do, and put a sixty-one-bar solo trombone feature into the third movement:
Nick's old chair, alone, out front on the fifty, band holding a chord underneath, nowhere on the
field to hide. It has to be cast or cut by the first week of October. He has not asked him to play
it and does not intend to ask. On the record: "It was written for whoever's standing on the fifty in
October." Then, a minute later, unprompted: "He knows."
· · ·
ROAD TO GLORY
RTG-01 · Underdog Run · Week 0