In Wednesday’s (11/2) Detroit News, Lawrence B. Johnson writes, “Myles Harlan and Mickenna Keller are Metro Detroit teen musicians who share two deeply personal perspectives. They both harbor a passion for the oboe, and they believe their lives are going to be different because of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s Civic Youth Ensembles training program. The two oboists will join hundreds of other Civic Youth participants in the DSO’s annual fall Civic Experience, a festive showcase that will spread into every corner of the Max M. Fisher Music Center on Saturday and Sunday. ‘It’s amazing,’ says Grosse Pointe Woods resident Harlan of his opportunity to rehearse weekly under conductor Kenneth Thompson from Bowling Green (Ohio) State University and to get coaching from musicians of the DSO. ‘To play on the same stage as Mr. Baker is a great experience,’ he says, referring to DSO principal oboist Donald Baker. Along with Harlan, 16, in his fifth year with the Civic program, more than a thousand Detroit area children, from third-grade beginners to high school seniors, converge on The Max to play in one of the 18 classical and jazz ensembles. … Charles Burke, the DSO’s director of education, refers to the burgeoning educational enterprise as the Silicon Valley of music learning. … ‘Within 15 years, we want to be training 10,000 young musicians a week during the academic year.’ ”
Posted November 2, 2011
