Sitting in the center of the empty concert hall on the Booker T. Washington campus is the man for whom everyone has come to perform: Marvin Hamlisch. The accomplished composer, now the Dallas Symphony’s principal pops conductor, is a hulking man with a sharp, triangular nose that juts out from the center of his great round head. He fills up his seat, chin resting on his hand and a stack of papers in his lap, each with a name of a student who dreams of impressing him.

The students appear from behind the curtain on stage left: pianists, singers, violinists, guitar players, songwriters, jazz dancers, modern dancers, ballet dancers, and tap dancers. Some bounce out with worked-up enthusiasm, others tiptoe into the stage lights hesitantly. The parade of talent continues for the better part of three hours, and if they are lucky, each student may be on stage for 90 seconds. Hamlisch sits patiently, watching and listening, his serious facial expression rarely changing. Occasionally he nods his head with the tune or jots down some notes. Then he throws up his hand mid-performance and bellows out above the music. “OK! Thank you!” The students freeze and stare back. It takes a moment for it to settle in: their time is up. They turn and leave the way they came.

The process couldn’t be more different than American Idol. There is no feedback from judges, no cutting remarks from Simon Cowell. There’s only silence, and somehow, it feels worse.

“I learned when doing A Chorus Line that there’s no better way to do this,” Hamlisch  says, turning to the handful of people sitting in the hall with him. “And that’s a shame, because this is terrible.”

Hamlisch, a veteran of Broadway, movies, and television, has been through his share of grueling auditions. He is one of only a few people who have won all of the major American show business awards: Grammy, Emmy, Oscar, and Tony. He was at Booker T. Washington yesterday afternoon because he heard about the school’s reputation, and he had an idea to hold an audition to see if any students were ready to perform with the Pops Orchestra later this season. The trick is, however, other than that vague idea of a performance that includes Booker T. students, no one knows exactly what Hamlisch is looking for.

The brief performances he gets range widely. There’s the pop duo, the Les Misérables solo, the R&B singer, and the near-virtuosic rendition of a Paganini piece on violin. Then there are the many, many dancers, most of whom come to the stage and lash into a mix of jazz and contemporary styles, spinning and leaping with various levels of skill and confidence. At the end of nearly ever dancer’s audition, Hamlisch yells back: “Do you do tap?”

“Yes,” “No,” “A little,” “At a beginner-intermediate level,” come the replies. After a dozen or so dancers it becomes clear that Hamlisch is looking for tap dancers, only tap doesn’t happen to be one of the school’s strengths.

“It’s like going to a car dealership and you want a blue car,” Hamlisch says during a break. “Only you get there and the dealer says, ‘I have these really great black cars.’”

In all, 45 students have their time in front of the maestro. Most are greeted politely and sent off briskly. Hamlisch passes a thick stack of papers to his assistant: the rejections. There are still a few pages in his lap.

It’s almost 6 p.m., and there are two performers left. A girl of about 17 walks on stage in an elegant dress with a large fabric flower on the front that feels torn from a photograph of The Cotton Club in the 1930s. Her name is Dacia Kings. She is shy, but poised, with big shining eyes and cheeks that remind me of Ella Fitzgerald. She is accompanied by an older, broad-shouldered man with a bald head, wearing a plaid button-down shirt and a small pair of silver spectacles. He sits at the piano, and the girl says they are going to play a tune by George Gershwin. Hunching over the keys, the man works over a beautiful layering of chords and melodic runs, and when the girl starts to sing “Someone to Watch Over Me” from Oh, Kay!, her rich and deep voice resonates through empty hall, filling it with a thick, soulful sound. The pair makes it all the way through the end of the song, and when they are finished, Hamlisch throws his hands up excitedly. “That was great!” he yells. “Wonderful! I have to ask you something. Are you her father?”

“Yes,” the pianist responds, a little bashfully.

“I knew it!” Hamlisch is leaning out of his seat. “I could see the love in your eyes, and the way you communicated. Do you know any upbeat songs?”

The pair jump right into a confident, almost effortless rendition of “My Favorite Things.” Hamlisch’s hand is up again. “Okay! Great! That’s great. You’ll definitely be hearing from me, and you, too,” he says to the piano player. “You better be playing with her.”

The smiling father-daughter duo thank Hamlisch and walk off stage beaming. Hamlisch turns around.

“Sometimes you sit through 600 and number 601 is the one you are looking for,” he says.

Earlier today,  Dacia Kings and her father received the promised call from Marvin Hamlisch. He asked them to perform at tonight’s all-Gershwin performance of the Dallas Symphony.