Youth group hits right note
Talent of orchestra on show
IF YOU are walking past the Toowoomba Grammar School this week you might just hear the beautiful sound of classical music coming from inside.
That’s because 60 young musicians from the Australian Youth Orchestra’s Young Symphonists program are in the city of a nine-day residential workshop.
Aged between 12 and 17, the musicians were selected after an intensive audition process.
Australian Youth Orchestra Young Symphonists Program music director Roger Benedict said the musicians came from all different regions and backgrounds.
“Some of them will have been in very good youth orchestras before, some won’t have played in an orchestra much,” Mr Benedict said.
“They come from very different teaching styles, some from regional areas where they have had less access to music. So it’s a learning curve for everybody but the whole point is to work as a team.
“We teach them about team work and how to collaborate and negotiate to sound like a fantastic orchestra.”
Mr Benedict is also the principal viola with the Sydney Symphony Orchestra. The workshop is held in a different place each year, including Melbourne and Sydney in the past two years.
Concert master and violinist Sola Hughes said she had always dreamt of being able to lead an orchestra.
“I have been playing since I was seven,” she said.
“I really love how you can have an emotion that’s not really easily able to be expressed in words and then I like being able to put that through the instrument and then people might be able to feel the same thing.”
The Logan teenager hopes to one day be part of a professional chamber orchestra.
The program will culminate in a concert at 7.30pm on Saturday at the Empire Theatre.