“National Youth Orchestra 2, formed this year under the auspices of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, has teenagers from around the country learning their professional craft with some of the busiest members of the Philadelphia Orchestra,” writes David Patrick Stearns in Thursday’s (6/30) Philadelphia Inquirer. “ ‘They’re getting a chance to work in ways that they wouldn’t in their home town,’ said Philadelphia Orchestra bassist Joe Conyers, who is particularly keen to work with what’s called the URC contingent—students [ages 14-17] from under-represented communities.” NYO2 aims to expand the pool of young musicians who will bring greater diversity to orchestral music. “In Philadelphia … a standard symphonic concert featuring NYO2 … and the Philadelphia Orchestra, playing both alternately and side by side, is at 6 p.m. Saturday at the Kimmel Center [led by Giancarlo Guerrero]. At noon Sunday, the amassed forces of the Philadelphia Orchestra, NYO2, and its older predecessor, National Youth Orchestra USA (NYO-USA) [for ages 16 to 19], converge at the 23rd Street Armory in a concert including the final movement of Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4 that, with some 350 musicians, could blow the roof off. … NYO2 … is an extension of … NYO-USA, which has a European tour this summer under Valery Gergiev.”
Posted July 1, 2016
In photo: Young musicians of NYO2 rehearse in Purchase, New York. Photo by Stephanie Berger
