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New York Youth Symphony Announces
Three Début Artists in Three Premières
for 45th Season in Carnegie Hall.
Award-Winning Orchestra Features Début of
Conductor Ryan McAdams and New “Maestro” Series with Alan Gilbert and James DePreist.
Auditions Under Way for Expanded Programs in Orchestra, Chamber Music,Jazz, Chorus, Apprentice Conducting, and Composition.
The award-winning New York Youth Symphony is currently holding auditions through September 30 for its expanded programs in Orchestra, Chamber Music, Jazz, Chorus, Apprentice Conducting, and Composition. The orchestra will perform repertoire to include Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite, Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, and Rachmaninoff’s Second Symphony. Excepting some modest fees in certain programs, all those enrolled participate on full scholarship.
In an expansion of The Roy and Shirley Durst Début Series, three soloists will make their débuts in works commissioned as part of the acclaimed First Music series of compositions by the nation’s most outstanding young composers. Violinist William Harvey will perform a new work by Clint Needham; mezzo-soprano Kate Lindsey will sing a new work by Jacob Bancks; and percussionist James Deitz (joined by Svet Stoyanov) will give the première of a work by Lembit Beecher. The soloists will also perform, respectively, Ravel’s Tzigane, songs by Charles Ives, and Philip Glass’s Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists.
Conductor Ryan McAdams makes his début as the orchestra’s 15th music director, succeeding Paul Haas. A graduate of Indiana University and Juilliard, Mr. McAdams most recently served as conducting apprentice of the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic under music director Alan Gilbert.
Another highlight of the orchestral season is a new series called “Meet the Maestros,” introducing musicians in rehearsal to professional conductors. The 2007-08 season opens with Alan Gilbert, music director-designate of the New York Philharmonic, and James DePreist, director of Conducting and Orchestral Studies at Juilliard.
Activities in other programs have also been expanded for the 2007-08 season. The Chamber Music Program offers individualized instruction for students at every skill level, with masterclasses provided by Pamela Frank, Fred Sherry, and Carol Wincenc, among others. Jazz Band Classic in its sixth season features guest soloists Joe Lovano and Scott Wendholt and clinics with Benny Powell, Marvin Stamm, Mike Holober, and Gene Aitken. Symphony Singers, open to singers through age 24, explores diverse repertoire, from Brahms to Bernstein to Broadway. The ground-breaking Making Score composition program offers workshops with guest lecturers Philip Glass, Jennifer Higdon, Aaron Jay Kernis, Joan LaBarbara, Wynton Marsalis, Tobias Picker, and Christopher Theofanidis; soprano Dawn Upshaw; and The New York Times critic Steve Smith.
The
New York Times,
Tuesday, February 27, 2007
In a Hopi Labyrinth, Strings Flicker and Flow
by Steve Smith
The concerts that the New York Youth Symphony is presenting at Carnegie Hall this season are bittersweet affairs: each brings closer the impending departure of Paul Haas, the group's dynamic young music director, who will step down in May. This lanky conductor is surely on the brink of a noteworthy career, judging by the evidence of his work with this fine group.
Each concert by this orchestra includes a new piece by an emerging composer; Sunday afternoon's performance opened with ''Tapu'at'' by Paul Fowler, who received his training at Ithaca College and the University of Michigan. The seven-minute work evoked the courses of a circular Hopi labyrinth, linking each to an elemental characteristic: fire, water, earth, air, spirit, light and sound, according to Mr. Fowler's program note.
The piece began with whirling woodwind figures, pulsing percussion and flickering strings. A second section had a slow, gentle flow, with liquid solo lines played beautifully by Laura Lutzke, the concertmaster. A stately passage for brass and rumbling percussion was followed by sections that were radiant, ghostly and shimmering by turns. The conclusion returned to the sounds of the introduction, restated more boldly. The colorful, attractive music was an ideal showcase for these accomplished players.
Mr. Haas established a suitably gracious tone for Tchaikovsky's Variations on a Rococo Theme, which included glowing contributions from the winds and French horns. Efe Baltacigil, the young associate principal cellist of the Philadelphia Orchestra, played the solo part with a warm, singing tone and a clean, elegant technique. This music is Tchaikovsky at his most congenial, and the players brought out its delectable sweetness.
After intermission Mr. Haas took the stage to conduct Brahms's Symphony No. 4, then noticed something amiss and excused himself. A moment later, to the amusement of the audience, a stagehand removed the music stand from the podium. Was there a hint of bravado in Mr. Haas's return? Probably. But it was not misplaced: Every note and gesture in this score could be discerned in his exacting stick technique and body language as he steered his players through a compelling performance.
The
New York Times,
Tuesday, May 23, 2006
New York Youth Symphony Performs Mahler's Sixth at Carnegie Hall
by Anthony Tommasini, photo by Richard Termine for the New York Times
Over 43 seasons, the New York Youth Symphony has taken on daunting repertory. But not many pieces — not Shostakovich's Fifth Symphony, not even Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring" — are as hard to bring off as Mahler's tumultuous Symphony No. 6 in A minor.
So all praise to this orchestra of players ranging in age from 12 to 22 (though most are high school students) for its accomplished performance of the Mahler Sixth in its final concert of the season on Sunday afternoon at Carnegie Hall. The conductor was Paul Haas, the orchestra's lanky and dynamic 35-year-old music director, who does not look much older than his players. All in all, this was an involving and brave account of Mahler's 85-minute score.
But first the orchestra gave the premiere of a work by Takuma Itoh, a young composer. By artistic policy the Youth Symphony presents a premiere by an emerging composer on every program. What major professional orchestra can match that commitment to new music?
The work here was the Concerto for String Quartet and Orchestra, composed last year by Mr. Itoh, who is about to receive his bachelor's degree from the Shepherd School of Music at Rice University in Houston. The soloists were the members of the adventurous Shanghai Quartet.
Just seconds after starting, Mr. Haas stopped the performance because a cellphone had gone off in the hall. The work's opening is slow, soft and mysterious: over a tremulous pedal tone, a series of rising sustained pitches slowly emerges, each note initiated by an urgent rhythmic figure. The astringent harmony of stacked-up sustained tones is meant to hover with quiet intensity, and the cellphone ruined the effect. To his credit, Mr. Haas waited for quiet, then began again.
The 12-minute concerto is written in one continuous movement with three distinct sections. After the deftly orchestrated slow introduction, the instruments of the string quartet enter one at a time with frenetic flourishes that shoot up the scale, which sets the restless first section in motion. In the slow central episode, Mr. Itoh shows an ear for writing thick, pungent chords bursting with notes. In its impressionistic colorings, the bracing concluding section sounds like updated Ravel, but in a brashly youthful and fresh way.
The Mahler work is both a four-movement symphony in the classical tradition and a volatile outpouring filled with evocations of pastoral scenes (complete with cowbells), the murky cosmos, distant churchly chorales and, by the end, pummeling strokes of fate. If some of the tragedy buried in this score eluded these young players, they certainly identified with the music's raging hormonal confusions.
For every fleeting moment of unpolished execution, there were whole passages of brassy exuberance — or visceral power, unerring ensemble or, in the wistful Andante, disarming tenderness. The musicians seemed to know this score intimately. And Mr. Haas conducted it from memory, winning enthusiastic applause from his hard-working players during a long ovation.
The
New York Times,
Tuesday, November 29, 2005
Young Players Address Composers of the Past and Future
by Allan Kozinn, photo by Hiroyuki Ito for the New York Times
The New York Youth Symphony is the kind of invaluable organization that was plentiful in the 1950's and 60's,
but seems anomalous today, when young people supposedly have no interest in classical music. Yet this ensemble,
which was founded in 1963, seems not to lack participants. It has a roster of 185 musicians, ages 12 to 22,
half from public schools, who rehearse and perform full-fledged repertory works, from Beethoven to Stravinsky,
as well as new scores commissioned for them.
The composers who write for these players don't skimp on modernist difficulties. The premiere on the
orchestra's Sunday afternoon program at Carnegie Hall, Ryan Anthony Francis's "Axiom" (2005), has its share of
difficult turns, including a shifting texture that must move, quickly but subtly, from cloudy and shimmering
to focused and rhythmically sharp-edged. Paul Haas, the orchestra's music director, had his players focused
fully on the work's challenges, and the performance proved an appealing showcase for Mr. Francis, who was born
in 1981 and is likely to be heard from again.
Just before Mr. Francis's work, Mr. Haas opened the program with Leonard Bernstein's "Candide" Overture. As
curtain-raisers go, it is difficult to beat "Candide," with its glittering textures and ebullient rhythms, but
those qualities make considerable demands in both energy and cohesion. If there is one thing young musicians
can be counted on to provide, though, it is energy, and these players gave the overture a zesty and beautifully
polished reading.
The program also included two works from the core repertory. On the first half, Carter Brey, the principal
cellist of the New York Philharmonic, joined Mr. Haas and company as the soloist in a shapely, singing account
of Dvorak's Cello Concerto. And after the intermission, the orchestra offered a solid and often electric
performance of the Beethoven Fifth Symphony.
The
New York Times,
Tuesday, May 31, 2005
Young (Not Only at Heart), and Tangling With Masters
by Jeremy Eichler
That overused catchphrase of the 1990's applies here: it takes a village to raise a youth orchestra too. Think of all the needed instruments, the teachers and the private lessons, the rehearsals with special orchestral coaches, the encouragement (read bullying) to practice early on, the parental leap of faith to believe that a twinkle-twinkle-scraping kid could someday play tone poems by Richard Strauss, or anything else for that matter.
It seemed as if most of the village turned out on Sunday afternoon as proud families, friends, and other supporters streamed into Carnegie Hall for the final performance of the New York Youth Symphony's 42nd season. It included Brahms's "Tragic Overture," Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 and, yes, Strauss's "Also Sprach Zarathustra."
Beyond just providing students, 12 to 22, with real experience in an orchestra, the Youth Symphony also promotes young professional musicians in the early stages of their careers. One example is Ankush Kumar Bahl, the group's assistant conductor, who made his Carnegie Hall debut leading an energetic reading of the Brahms overture with clear authority and enthusiasm, though by the orchestra's standards, the playing was somewhat roughhewn. A second example is Judd Greenstein, a graduate school-bound composer whose jaunty work "Today and Everyday" was given its premiere. Inspired by the restless pulse of Mr. Greenstein's native New York City, the piece had jazzy Bernsteinian syncopations, a Coplandesque brass chorale, and above all, an impressive confidence which will serve him well as he develops a more distinctive voice.
That work, along with the remainder of the program, was led by the group's capable music director, Paul Haas, who drew excited and admirably polished playing from the orchestra, both in the Strauss and the Bruch concerto. The solo part of the Bruch was unspooled with impressive refinement, emotional freedom and tonal depth by the violinist Anne Akiko-Meyers.
There are clearly players in this orchestra bound for professional careers in music, but just as important are those who will one day take their seats in the audience. Conservatories are bursting at the seams, but our supply of impassioned listeners desperately needs restocking. And for that job, there can scarcely be better training.
The
New York Times,
Tuesday, March 8, 2005
The Passion of a Romantic Strikes a Chord
by Jeremy Eichler
With all those broadly winged melodies that are so much fun to play, and the intense emotions that resonate with the highs and lows of adolescent life, the symphonies and concertos of Tchaikovsky can seem made-to-order for the young classical musician. They certainly did on Sunday afternoon, when the New York Youth Symphony passionately devoted itself to a mostly Tchaikovsky program for the second Carnegie Hall concert of its 42nd season.
But before the Russian fireworks began, the orchestra, made up of 108 musicians from the metropolitan New York area, performed something fairly common for this ensemble but very rare for most youth symphonies: a world premiere. Through its essential First Music series, the orchestra has commissioned works from 62 young composers. It’s hard to imagine a better way to support new voices while at the same time building contemporary music into the regular diet of emerging musicians. In this case, the composer was Thomas Osborne, whose “Nostalgia of the Infinite,” after the painting by Giorgio de Chirico, was a handsome study in musical contrasts, an evolving orchestral dialogue between steely, brass-heavy gestures and a more lush and pliable response from the strings.
It was followed by Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1 with Antonio Pompa-Baldi, a young professional making his Carnegie Hall debut. Mr. Pompa-Baldi and the orchestra, under its music director, Paul Haas, did not always agree on tempo and pacing, but this did not prevent the soloist from displaying a fluid yet hard-edged technique and a fiery Romantic temperament. Most striking was the sheer amount of sound he produced in the outer movements with chords that banged out like pistol shots over the orchestra. With time, he may develop finesse in equal measure.
The concert concluded with Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony, cloaked in mystery where appropriate and exultant on the right occasions. Both the symphony and especially the concerto are repertory war horses, and yet the great thing about youth orchestra concerts is that many of these players are encountering this music for the first time. Those initial meetings are precious, for the happen only once, and judging by the applause between movements and the number of young people in the audience, you can bet they were occurring on both sides of the footlights.
The
New York Times,
Friday, March 4, 2005
Classical Music and Dance Guide
New York Youth Symphony
by Anthony Tommasini
One of the best ways to reconnect with the adventure and excitement of works that have long been repertory staples is to hear them performed by eager and unjaded young musicians who are truly thrilled to be playing them. This always happens at the concerts by the excellent, highly skilled, and hard working New York Youth Symphony. So you expect Sunday afternoon’s performances of two Tchaikovsky war horses, the Fifth Symphony and the Piano Concerto No. 1, conducted by Paul Haas, to be deeply rewarding. The soloist in the concerto is the brilliant Italian pianist Antonio Pompa-Baldi, winner of the Silver Medal at the 2001 Van Cliburn Competition. The orchestra also assures adventure by playing the premiere of a short work by a young composer at every concert. Sunday’s offering is “The Nostalgia of the Infinite” by Thomas Osborne.
Making Score
Symphony
Magazine,
September-October 2004
Score one for Young Composers
by Chester Lane
The New York Youth Symphony’s Making Score program offers
hands-on experience in the creation of music, to unleash the composer
within. … Making Score, a four-year-old project of the New York
Youth Symphony that offers musicians ranging from pre-teen to 22 –some of them, but not all, members of the orchestra– broad
exposure to techniques of composition, orchestration, arranging, and
creative collaboration with performers. … Though
unprecedented in the annals of orchestra education programs, Making Score
is almost ‘business as usual’ for the New
York Youth Symphony, part and parcel of its remarkably broad mission to
develop young talent while pushing the boundaries of the repertoire. …
During the last two decades, no youth orchestra in the country has
been more relentlessly committed to generating new music than the NYYS.
… This year’s sessions
offered a fascinating window into the different orientations that
established composers have towards the orchestra. …
ASCAP’s Fran Richards, who sits in
regularly on the Making Score sessions, at one point told me [the writer],
‘You can be in a Ph.D. program in composition and not be challenged like
this.’
The
New York Sun,
Tuesday, June 3, 2003
Classical Music
The
Excellence of the New York
Youth Symphony
by Adam Baer
It is human nature to relish children who perform incredible
feats. Mozart stole the heart of Europe as a child prodigy,
as did Yehudi Menuhin. The underage virtuoso brigade and those
who nurture them aren’t slowing down today.
Yet the draw of the New York Youth Symphony, which closed its
40th anniversary season Sunday in Carnegie Hall, is not the
circus-act wonder that accompanies a 10-year-old violinist playing
Brahms at lightning speed. The talented, well-rounded teenage
members of this tuition-free band — arguably America’s best
youth orchestra — are not, on the whole, prodigious. No, their
appeal is more compelling than wizardry: They grip you because
it’s evident how hard they rehearse, how much they love music
and want to perform it well.
Sunday’s performance, led by music director Paul Haas, a young
maestro who enjoys the power of extreme physical gestures, began
with a fluid reading of Wagner’s "Tannhäuser" overture
that displayed an emphatic low brass section and articulate
string players. Violin tremolos shimmered over a smooth solo
horn. Crescendos occurred gradually and with immediacy at once.
And Mr. Haas showed himself to be a great, vibrant communicator
of what in a musical piece needs to happen when.
Indeed, that’s one of the winning ways the orchestra functions:
It chooses to hire young maestros who use the group as a learning
vessel while teaching musicians close in age to them; the direction
the musicians receive, therefore, isn’t from an authoritative
educator, but rather from an accessible role model. The group’s
previous conductor, Mischa Santora, left old-school precision
and depth with the band; Paul Haas is bringing it electricity.
Another novel quality of the Youth Symphony is its "First
Music" program: Every concert is guaranteed to feature
a world premiere work from a rising young composer. In this
guise, young musicians work with a young conductor on something
written by one of their peers. It’s not only a new way to hear
new music and a great opportunity for conductors, it’s a great
experience for players.
Many talented instrumentalists who either play in other youth
symphonies or attend the pre-college programs of New York’s
conservatories don’t get a chance to play truly new American
music until their college years. And even then, it’s usually
music written by someone seasoned. New music is important to
learn on: it teaches musicians to count, to use their instruments
in non-traditional ways, and to remain open to techniques like
atonality, which continue to annoy a shockingly large number
of professionals, in part, because they didn’t play modern music
as children.
Sunday’s premiere was "If I Forget Thee" by Brian
Herrington, a work inspired by a comment made by William Faulkner
upon winning the 1950 Nobel Prize. ("I decline to accept
the end of man," he said.) The work begins with cacophony
of the tragic variety and then segues into a mixture of modernism
and folk traditions from the South; a cellist strums her instrument
while wearing a metal fitting over her left fingers like a banjo
player, and violinists fiddle a hymn. It was an intriguing blend
of common-man expression and formal acuity.
The Youth Symphony also often features a well-known soloist,
often from the annals of the group’s alumni like violinist Cho
Liang Lin. This concert, however, welcomed pianist Misha Dichter
in a brash orchestral rendition of Gershwin’s "Rhapsody
in Blue," where the jazzy excitement of the orchestral
musicians eclipsed any slips or rhythmic inconsistencies of
the soloist. Even a work like this, after all, is probably new
to the Symphony’s musicians, and it’s hard to explain just how
thrilling it is to play for the first time Gershwin’s New York
masterwork behind a famous pianist in Carnegie Hall.
Attach that sentiment to the orchestra’s second-half reading
of Bartók’s eloquent " Concerto for Orchestra," but
add a dose of exactitude that would benefit many professional
symphonies. Mr. Haas led the group through a truly polished
performance of the Hungarian modernist’s last Symphonic masterwork.
Mysteriously dark cello lines opened with work as witty flute
solos sang atop the strings. The second movement’s bassoon dance
frolicked with sarcasm that intensified in the fourth movement’s
waltz. And gigantic climaxes written over shifty rhythms bellowed
with an uncanny amount of energy and passion. It was as finely
tuned and stirring a performance of this piece as New York has
heard in some time.
The New York Youth Symphony now also offers programs for young
composers, chamber musicians, conductors, and jazz players;
next week, its "Jazz Band Classic," a band devoted
to the big bands of the 1930s and 1940s, makes its Carnegie
debut. With such depth to its programming, it’s clearly the
city’s preeminent training institution. But it’s also a great
artistic vehicle. Many of the professional musicians trolling
the city’s top stages got their start in this band, after all,
and many of them were already pretty amazing as teenagers. The
band’s next three-concert season features both Mahler’s Fifth
Symphony and violinist Cho Liang Lin. Parents with musical children
should certainly consult the group’s Web site for program information;
and any music lover in search of a new brand of concert-going
elation might do equally as well with a subscription.
The
New York Times,
Wednesday, Feb. 19, 2003
Music
Review
Attending
to the Needs of the Musical Food Chain
by
Allan Kozinn
There are all sorts of reasons that the New York Youth Symphony
is a worthy project, and if some are purely educational – for
40 seasons it has offered talented musicians from 12 to 22 a place
to learn orchestral playing – others have to do with its place
in the larger music scene.
Its performances, for one thing, are surprisingly good, given
its student-ensemble status. Also, the orchestra has made a point
of commissioning new works from young composers, a practice that
touches on every part of the musical food chain: the composers
get paying jobs, the musicians put together works they can’t hear
on recordings, and listeners get an early glimpse of a composer
whom they may hear from again.
At the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall concert on Sunday afternoon,
the new work was “Torn Threads Rewoven” by Matthew Tommasini,
a doctoral student of Bright Sheng at the University of Michigan.
Mr. Tommasini’s piece, inspired by a visit to ground zero, is
thoughtfully organized but also openly emotional. It is not without
clichés, but they are comparatively few. More telling is Mr. Tommasini’s
approach to quickly shifting orchestral coloration, which the
players responded to with an appropriate suppleness.
The performance was conducted by Paul Haas, who became music director
earlier this season. He uses clear, precise gestures, and he draws
polished, energetic performances. The orchestra’s sound is not
one size fits all. In the Barber Violin Concerto, which filled
out the first half of the program, the orchestra matched and amplified
the lush, shapely sound that Giora Schmidt brought to the solo
line. The other big work on the program, the Sibelius Second Symphony,
demanded something very different – wintry heft and a large measure
of melancholy – and Mr. Haas and his players created that work
effectively and affectingly.
Chamber Music Program
Chamber
Music America Magazine,
February 2001 Volume 18, Number 1:
Youthful
Chamber Music
Now in its twentieth season, the
Chamber Music Program of the New York Youth Symphony has established
itself as one of the most well-respected ensemble music training
programs in the country. From October through April, mixed ensembles
meet weekly for coachings, participate in Chamber Music Day
(which includes sight-reading sessions, masterclasses, workshops,
and informal performances), take part in educational outreach
programs in NYC public and private schools, and present recitals
in venues throughout the city. This season the chamber music
program welcomes a new director, Lisa Tipton, violinist of the
Meridian String Quartet.
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