After three unsuccessful auditions, a Curtis grad has won the Philadelphia Orchestra’s principal trumpeter spot. He’s 26.

The Philadelphia Orchestra’s long and rocky search for a new principal trumpeter has landed on a recent Curtis Institute of Music graduate. James Vaughen, 26, won the job after a string of auditions that ended Nov. 1.

The hunt for a permanent principal trumpeter has been going, off and on, for several years. Vaughen, in fact, had auditioned for the position three times before without success.

It was the fourth time that was the charm, said the 2023 Curtis grad.

“The super-final round when they took the screen down was probably the most stressful part of it, because I was looking at basically the teachers at Curtis that I know and have studied with,” said Vaughen. (The first rounds of auditions typically take place behind a screen with the goal of keeping candidates anonymous and audition committees unbiased.)

They liked what they heard, and Vaughen prevailed.

But winning the audition wasn’t the last step standing between Vaughen and starting the job. The trumpeter has just begun, this season, as principal trumpeter with the Minnesota Orchestra, and his start date in Philadelphia had not been finalized as of Sunday.

Choosing between principal spots in two great orchestras isn’t a position in which he ever expected to find himself, but it wasn’t a tough choice. “Definitely Philadelphia was a big dream orchestra of mine,” he said.

Vaughen studied at Curtis with longtime Philadelphia Orchestra principal trumpeter David Bilger, and “it’s been the orchestra I’ve heard the most and been around.”

Before Minnesota, Vaughen was assistant principal trumpeter of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and held a one-year principal position with the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra before that.

He follows Esteban Batallán, who came to the Philadelphia Orchestra in the 2024-25 season, and, less than six months after being announced as a “historic hire” for Philadelphia, decided to return to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Batallán cited stylistic differences.

That doesn’t seem a likely hurdle for Vaughen, who says that “it was always very inspiring to hear the Philadelphia Orchestra as a student, hearing that sound and trying to emulate it in my practice and my work.”

Philadelphia Orchestra music and artistic director Yannick Nézet-Séguin, in a statement, called Vaughen an “exceptional musician with a beautiful sound who will be a natural fit” with the orchestra.

Born in Williamsville, N.Y., near Buffalo, Vaughen moved to Virginia until age 10 and then lived in Champaign, Ill. After high school, he auditioned for Curtis and didn’t get in. He went on to spend a year with AmeriCorps in Mississippi tutoring second and third graders in math and reading.

At the time of the Curtis audition, he was dealing with having injured himself playing, “so I was a bit frustrated with how I played in that first audition.”

Working with children, “restored some of the childhood fun of music, and I learned how to play trumpet without injuring myself.”

The year ended up being important to him both musically and personally, he said. He re-auditioned for Curtis, and this time got in.

“You don’t often get a chance in life to start from scratch again.”