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The YOA Orchestra of the Americas, featuring musicians aged 18 to 30, is performing at The playhouse July 14
LORI GALLAGHER THE DAILY GLEANER
Music lovers have the opportunity to enjoy a rare treat at The Playhouse on Tuesday, July 14, when the YOA Orchestra of the Americas takes the stage.
The world-class symphony orchestra is made up of approximately 100 gifted young musicians aged 18 to 30, representing 25 countries in the Western Hemisphere. Carlos Miguel Prieto is their conductor, as well as music director and conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra of Mexico and the Louisiana Philharmonic.
“We’ve just finished the third rehearsal and I can tell you you’re in for an unbelievable treat,” said Prieto during a telephone interview with The Daily Gleaner on July 8. “I’ve been with this orchestra since its beginning, which was in 2002”
Thanks to the musicians involved, the orchestra is truly trilingual, he says, speaking French, Spanish and English.
“It’s a very interesting musical phenomena, but it’s also a very interesting social phenomena because people grow from knowing each other. Everyone has different personalities and throughout the residency, which is now here at Crandall (University) in Moncton, they get to know each other and kind of influence each other, and by the first concert it’s already a very beautifully finished product,” says Prieto.“It’s a very beautiful experience, one of the real miracles of music, and I think it’s an example for anyone who is striving to achieve beauty, to achieve harmony. I would not miss this concert.”
The members apply to get in, doing their auditions through YouTube, he explains.
“There is a faculty of every instrument. They’re world class people and they’re very well-known musicians in their own instrument, and they actually select the (young) musicians,”he says.
Over the years, this has gotten more challenging for the faculty, as more and more young people apply.
“I think the first year we had five or six applicants for clarinet and this year we had 300. It’s a complete success story from every point of view,”says Prieto.
YOA members meet for the first time when they come together for the residency period, which this year runs from July 5 to 17 in Moncton. Their first rehearsal was held on July 7.
“They are experienced musicians, but sometimes you get the incredible experience where they are doing a piece for the first time, pieces that may be very well known for the others. This is very nice because it has kind of a freshness and a novelty,”says Prieto.
He notes that not only is this the first time the residency has been held in New Brunswick, this is the first time it has been held in Canada.
“We have done residencies in Boston and come to Canada (to perform), but this is five or six years ago,”he says.
The first concert will be held in Moncton, then the orchestra will come to Fredericton to perform at The Playhouse on July 14. This will kick off the YOA’s Pan-American Tour across Eastern Canada in July and August.
“It’s a very nice tour and a nice experience,” he says, one that benefits musicians and audiences alike.
For the musicians, he says, it’s about the music, but it’s also about the social connection.
“You make music, but you also bond and you learn from each other, and you establish relationships and you establish a way to learn music,” says Prieto. “That’s why you have to see it in concert to understand it. It’s impossible in words to explain what it is, but what I can tell you is it’s an incredible, miraculous kind of experience.”
He says he hopes the audience takes away “everything that the music brings, which is everything from the greatest joy to the greatest sadness to the greatest beauty and pain, but then at the end it’s kind of an exhilaration”
Prieto adds, “Don’t have any preconceived ideas of what this orchestra is or the music because this will completely change your idea of what classical music is.”
One of the performers with the YOA on this tour is Canada’s own Jessy Dubé. This is the second time the 26-year-old violinist from Quebec has been part of the orchestra. During her first tour in 2010, she travelled to South America.
“I think the most significant aspect of this orchestra that makes it different from the other orchestras is the spirit and the mission,” she says.“YOA has the goal of changing lives in all the countries where they are present. The people in this orchestra,of course they are excellent musicians and they work very hard and they want to improve themselves, but they also make a point of meeting other people and changing the communities where they are, and to learn other cultures and even learn other languages.”
During the residency in Moncton, the YOA musicians will work alongside the after-school orchestral program Sistema NB.
“I’m really excited to meet these young musicians, we’re going to play a concert with them. We heard lots of fantastic things about these children,” she says. “They’re working very hard and they love music and have lots of passion, so I’m really looking forward to playing with them and seeing them”
Being part of the orchestra opened up a whole new world for Dubé and changed how she looked at music.
“We spent one month in Columbia and I was really impressed because we made 15 concerts all around Columbia and we had free outdoor concerts for people who have never heard a symphony orchestra in their life because it’s too expensive for them to attend the professional orchestra”she says.“People were so impressed and so enthusiastic. We played sometimes for thousands of people in one night, and after the concert they would all gather around the bus to see us leaving. We felt like rock stars.”
All of the people, from all walks of life, appreciated the music they performed.
“In the northern countries, people tend to see classical music as something very intellectual or something for people who have received an education about music, maybe for people with a certain financial ease. But there, people consider music like something totally new for them and they were totally enthusiastic,”says Dubé.
It’s a message she tried to share with others when she returned to Canada.
“Classical music is about beauty and being happy to listen to somebody who is playing for you. I got that from YOA. I also got to learn Spanish, so it has opened a really new world to me,” she says, while also introducing her to great friends and new contacts.
Mark Gillespie, creative director and general manager with YOA, says the orchestra began for a number of reasons, the first of which was to create a platform for top young musicians from across the Americas, giving them the opportunity to study with top music coaches and showcasing their talent to audiences across the globe.
“The orchestra was also started as a means of displaying to the world what can happen when countries work together,”he says.“There is no other cultural project that involves an equal partnership between every country in North and South America, and the beautiful thing about an orchestra is that it takes many, many voices and somehow brings them together to sound as one.”
Lastly, he says, the orchestra was formed to showcase what has become the most important story in classical music the last 20 or 30 years – the rebirth of the symphony orchestra as a vehicle for social inclusion in some of the most unlikely settings.
“Youth orchestras have started and are growing in countries like Belize and Jamaica and Honduras,” he says.“This is a story that’s unique to our continent. ... Our musicians are very often the success stories out of these youth orchestras.”
Gillespie notes that this ties in nicely with what brought them to New Brunswick.
“For the past almost six years the efforts of what is now Sistema New Brunswick, and what grew out of the New Brunswick Youth Orchestra, tried to find a way to bring the youth orchestra into some of the most disadvantaged communities in New Brunswick and allow the orchestra to serve as a force of cohesion and a backbone, a place for young people to develop a sense of accomplishment and a sense of their own possibility,”he says.
Sistema New Brunswick has found a way to build across the province and serves as an example for Canada, he says.
“When the Pan Am Games invited the Orchestra of the Americas to be part of the games in Toronto this summer, ... we immediately selected Moncton to host the residence that leads into these concerts, which include the games, so we can shine a light on the achievement of the province,”he says.
They use the residency not just to train the musicians for the orchestra, says Gillespie, but to train and motivate the local kids as well.
Experience the YOA Orchestra of the Americas for yourself at The Playhouse on Tuesday, July 14, at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available through The Playhouse box office or theplayhouse.ca.