National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America

2013 ^[3]

Eligibility

To apply to join the NYO-USA, applicants must be between the ages of 16 and 19 years old during the summer of participation (e.g. for the 2014 season, applicants’ birthdays must fall between July 1, 1994, and June 30, 1998). Additionally, applicants must be United States citizens or permanent residents who are not enrolled full-time in a college-level conservatory or music department on an instrumental performance major.^[4]

Applications and Auditions

Applications to join the NYO-USA are made online between the August and November preceding the summer of participation, and include a brief biographical essay, two recommendations and an audition video including a piece of choice and several excerpts. The audition video must also include spoken (biographical, motivational) sequences.^[4]

Applicants may apply more than once in any one year by submitting applications for more than one instrument (excluding instrument sub-family combinations such as piccolo and flute), but respective full applications have to be made.^[4]

Former members of the NYO-USA may apply to rejoin as long as the eligibility criteria, above, are met.^[4]

2013

The musicians of the inaugural NYO-USA came together on the campus of Purchase College for an intensive week of rehearsals to prepare the tour program. Instrumental faculty joined the young players for a side-by-side rehearsal early in the week, as Orchestra Director James Ross filled the self-described role of “surrogate father” to the orchestra, working to build a strong sense of ensemble and equip the players with the flexibility to respond to Valery Gergiev’s direction in just 10 days’ time. Outside of full orchestra and sectional rehearsals devoted to the tour program (Sean Shepherd’s new work for NYO-USA, Magiya; Tchaikovsky’s Violin Concerto; and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10), the residency offered a range of workshops and seminars. Topics included an introduction to the Feldenkrais Method, composing, conducting, musical improvisation, engaging audiences, yoga for musicians, and the cultural history of Moscow and St. Petersburg. The extraordinary instrumental faculty assembled for NYO-USA also offered a master class to the members of their respective sections and participated in an evening of chamber music reading and coaching.

July 4 was highlighted by a cookout for the orchestra and staff, and a few days later, NYO-USA enjoyed a day of sightseeing and music in New York City. Groups of musicians toured the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the National September 11 Memorial, Central Park, and Times Square before gathering at Avery Fisher Hall for a New York Philharmonic performance and a post-concert panel discussion with members of the orchestra about touring and life as a professional musician. A Hudson River boat cruise and impromptu on-deck dance party capped a memorable day off for NYO-USA.

The second week of NYO-USA saw the arrival of maestro Valery Gergiev and soloist Joshua Bell for their first rehearsals with the orchestra, leading up to NYO-USA’s debut concert at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center. Two nights later, the orchestra’s tour began with a sold-out performance at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, DC. The musicians then embarked on an international journey that took them to Russia for concerts at the historic Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory and the newly opened Mariinsky II in St. Petersburg, culminating in a performance at Royal Albert Hall in London as part of the BBC Proms.^[3]

2014

The second summer of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America was an opportunity to introduce the orchestra to its home audience in a coast-to-coast tour featuring two of America’s leading musicians, conductor David Robertson and violinist Gil Shaham. It also saw the debut of NYO-USA in its home venue at Carnegie Hall, in front of a full house and as part of WQXR / America Public Media’s Carnegie Hall Live radio broadcast series. This 2014 program featured not only two spectacular showpieces for the orchestra (Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story and Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition) but also the deeply moving Violin Concerto of Benjamin Britten and a new work written for NYO-USA—Radial Play by young American composer Samuel Adams.

Orchestra Director James Ross returned to prepare the orchestra during its residency at Purchase College, SUNY, and a group of new and returning faculty members from the top US orchestras were again on hand to provide expert coaching to NYO-USA’s 120 players, 24 of whom were veterans of the inaugural year. A highlight of the residency was a live taping of NPR’s hit radio show From the Tops, hosted by Christopher O’Riley and featuring the full orchestra and several of its members in performances and interviews. Each instrument section also introduced itself to the world with a video devised by and featuring its members, while the entire orchestra recorded three web-exclusive performance videos with a distinctly American flavor. NYO-USA’s tour took it from Tanglewood in Massachusetts’s Berkshires to Walt Disney Concert Hall in downtown Los Angeles, with stops in Boone, North Carolina; Chicago, Illinois; Jackson Hole, Wyoming; and Sonoma, California. (Please see below for full concert details.) Along the way, the players had the chance to visit a North Carolina blueberry festival, embark on an architectural river cruise of Chicago, hike in Grand Teton National Park, and see the sights of San Francisco. Each concert featured two different members of NYO-USA helping to introduce the program with personal remarks from the stage—a new element that was very well received by the orchestra’s audiences.

Another special focus for NYO-USA in 2014 was community and young-musician engagement. After some preparation during the training residency, players participated in three events that involved interactive performances, side-by-side music making, and mini-workshops for groups of young people in New York City, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. Partnering with New York City’s Department of Homeless Services, NYO-USA and the Weill Music Institute’s Community Programs team invited children from the shelter system to Carnegie Hall to meet and hear NYO-USA on the stage of Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage. NYO-USA musicians later collaborated with players from four El Sistema–inspired programs in the Bay Area in a seminario at the Palace of Fine Arts Theatre in San Francisco that included a pop-up concert in its iconic rotunda. On the final day of the tour, NYO-USA visited the Hollywood Bowl and worked side-by-side with young musicians from Los Angeles, including members of the El Sistema–inspired Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA).

2015

For its third season in 2015, the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA) realized its most ambitious tour to date, traveling for 15 days in China on the orchestra’s first visit to Asia, giving seven concerts in architecturally and acoustically spectacular concert halls, and experiencing different facets of China by visiting several major regions of the country. The culmination of two years of planning, NYO-USA’s tour and its role as a musical ambassador were recognized by both nations as an achievement of the annual US-China High Level Consultation on People-to-People Exchange (CPE), becoming one of four Cultural Pillars highlighted during the fifth CPE in Beijing.

Before embarking on the historic tour, 114 musicians from across the USA gathered, as in previous summers, at Purchase College, SUNY, for two intensive weeks of rehearsals and wide-ranging coaching by principal players from America’s top orchestras. NYO-USA Orchestra Director James Ross again prepared the musicians in the repertoire for the tour, while also mentoring two apprentice conductors, who were a new addition to the 2015 NYO-USA roster and had the opportunity to lead NYO-USA in rehearsal. The Purchase residency saw five new video projects created by the 2015 players to help introduce the new class of musicians to audiences in the USA and in China, as NYO-USA added an official Chinese Weibo page and Youku channel to its social media presence.

The 2015 guest artists and program paid tribute to China in multiple ways, starting with NYO-USA’s invitation to conductor Charles Dutoit, who has been one of the most active figures in leading both Western and Chinese orchestras within China. One of the works with which he is most closely identified, Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique, was the anchor of the 2015 program. To open each concert, Carnegie Hall commissioned one of China’s most celebrated composers, Tan Dun, to write a piece for the orchestra. Relishing the opportunity to connect East and West, new technology and ancient instruments, he produced an evocative, colorful score, Passacaglia: Secret of Wind and Birds, in which the musicians played both their own instrument and sound clips from their mobile devices (through which the audience was also invited to participate in each performance). For NYO- USA musicians, the opportunity to work with Tan Dun, who beautifully articulated the power music has to connect people of di event places and generations, proved deeply inspiring.

Another great Chinese artist, pianist YUNDI, was NYO- USA’s soloist, performing Beethoven’s magisterial “Emperor” Concerto. NYO-USA’s program was heard twice at home prior to the China tour: at Purchase College’s Performing Arts Center and at Carnegie Hall. The 2015 concert was not only broadcast as part of the Carnegie Hall Live radio series, but was also webcast live by medici.tv (and now archived online on the NYO-USA YouTube channel). Just before these concerts, the entire NYO-USA was welcomed at the Consulate General of the People’s Republic of China at a send-off reception hosted by Consul General Zhang Qiyue for more than 300 guests, including former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. At the consulate, NYO-USA’s brass, percussion, and harp sections previewed works that would be heard as part of free pre-concert lobby performances in each of the Chinese venues.

The China tour began at Beijing’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA)—an extraordinary venue in the heart of Beijing known colloquially as “The Egg.” NYO- USA’s debut in China was also broadcast nationally, adding 500,000 online and radio listeners to the sold-out crowd in the NCPA Concert Hall. Setting a pattern that would recur at each concert, the audience responded with great warmth and appreciation after each work, but none more so than NYO- USA’s final encore, a full orchestra arrangement of Qigang Chen’s “You and Me” (beloved in China as the theme song of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing).

From Beijing, the orchestra traveled to Shanghai, Suzhou, Xi’an, Shenzhen, Guangzhou, and Hong Kong, gradually working its way south. Major historical and cultural sites throughout the tour (the Great Wall of China, the Forbidden City, the Terracotta Warriors, I. M. Pei’s Suzhou Museum, and the Asia Society Hong Kong Center), as well as a mix of modern and traditional cityscapes at each stop, provided the students with a whirlwind immersion in 21st-century China. NYO-USA also had the chance to meet and make music with their peers in the Guangzhou Youth Orchestra and the Hong Kong Youth Symphony Orchestra along the way, and made immediate connections through the common language of music, some of which continued online well after NYO-USA returned home, exhausted but greatly nourished by this once- in-a-lifetime experience.^[5]

2016

In the summer of 2016, NYO-USA performed two ambitious programs with two renowned conductors: Christoph Eschenbach and Valery Gergiev. In order to prepare two complete programs, NYO-USA musicians had a longer residency at Purchase College than in previous years, rehearsing for three full weeks leading up to the six-concert tour. James Ross, director of orchestral activities at the University of Maryland, returned for a fourth consecutive year to lead the NYO-USA faculty, which included principal players from some of the country’s nest professional orchestras. Percussionists from NYO-USA and NYO2 also had the unique opportunity to rehearse chamber music with Sō Percussion.

For the first time, two young musicians were selected as apprentice composers for NYO-USA. During the Purchase residency, they had the opportunity to have their music workshopped with musicians from the orchestra, providing experience with orchestration and writing for larger forces and creating opportunities for dialogue between instrumentalists and composers who are peers. American composer Sean Shepherd served as a mentor and teacher for the young composers. The apprentice composers joined an apprentice orchestra manager, apprentice librarian, and two apprentice conductors as members of the 2016 NYO-USA.

During the Fourth of July weekend, NYO-USA musicians joined their peers in NYO2 for activities in Philadelphia. The NYO-USA brass section performed for tens of thousands of fans during postgame festivities at Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies, and the NYO-USA percussion section performed before The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Neighborhood Concert at Penn’s Landing. The weekend culminated in a side-by-side performance at the 23rd Street Armory.

Following the Philadelphia weekend and another week of rehearsals, NYO-USA took the stage at The Performing Arts Center at Purchase College and Carnegie Hall, with Christoph Eschenbach leading the ensemble in Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 in E-flat Major, K. 482—featuring Emanuel Ax as soloist-as well as Bruckner’s Symphony No. 6. While in New York, several members of the orchestra also participated in the Summer Music Educators Workshop, a Carnegie Hall program that gives music teachers from around the country the opportunity to hone their craft and learn from expert guest faculty. After performing at Carnegie Hall, NYO-USA flew to Amsterdam to join Valery Gergiev and Denis Matsuev for rehearsals in preparation for the performance of a brand-new program at Amsterdam’s legendary Royal Concertgebouw.

With several days to explore the city, the musicians toured the many canals, windmills, and bridges that dot the landscape, sampled the food, and viewed the works of the Dutch masters at the famed Rijksmuseum. A special reception was also held at the United States Consulate to salute NYO-USA’s Amsterdam debut and the launch of the orchestra’s 2016 European tour. Rehearsals were held at NedPhO-Koepel, the rehearsal hall for the Netherlands Philharmonic Orchestra. The new program included Debussy’s Prelude à l’après-midi d’un fauna; Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto No. 3; and Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 and selections from Romeo and Juliet. The concert was part of the Concertgebouw’s Robeco SummerNights series, and was streamed live around the globe thanks to a partnership with medici.tv. It is now archived on NYO-USA’s YouTube channel.

Following its sold-out show in Amsterdam, NYO-USA continued its tour with a performance the very next evening at Montpellier’s Opéra Berlioz as part of the Radio France Festival, which was broadcast to listeners nationwide. The musicians logged more miles the next morning, flying to Copenhagen. A tour of the historical sites included the Marble Church and the Amalienborg Palace, home of the Danish royal family. An afternoon boat cruise took them by Copenhagen’s Old Stock Exchange, one of the oldest buildings in the city, as well as the newly built opera house, home of the Danish National Opera. The next day, the orchestra took the stage for its third concert of the European tour, this time in Tivoli Concert Hall, located in the heart of Tivoli Gardens, the famous amusement park and pleasure garden in central Copenhagen. After a successful performance, the musicians enjoyed a rare evening off, lining up for thrilling roller coaster rides.

The final stop on the tour was Prague’s Smetana Hall, an Art Nouveau–style music hall filled with sculptures and paintings and topped by an exquisite glass dome. The orchestra added one more work to its repertoire, replacing the Rachmaninov piano concerto with Mendelssohn’s Symphony No. 4, “Italian.” As the last notes sounded, the musicians celebrated the emotional conclusion to an exhausting and fulfilling tour. A final day of sightseeing gave the musicians the opportunity to see the city and enjoy new friendships. ^[6]