Young players ready to bring it on

Talented composers and youthful orchestra’s big sonic palette sure to be a hit with audience

The NZ Symphony Orchestra National Youth Orchestra, one of our musical taonga, is together again. The best of our young orchestral musicians have spent a week in intensive rehearsals under a topnotch international conductor, culminating in this weekend’s concerts.

Past maestros include such notables as Yannick Nezet-Seguin, Benjamin Zander and Paul Daniel.

Sir James MacMillan takes the for the 2013 Sounz Contemporary Prize.

There is also much zesty radicalism to be found, showing the joy she gets from, she says, experimenting, playing and discovering. Yet for all the edges being cut, Oram still values the orchestra for what she describes as its history of constantly exposing audiences to the new.

“There’s “nothing like 60 to 100 people up there on stage together, creating so much sound”.

Jelleyman also relishes an orchestra’s big sonic palette. Young players are important to this Wellington composer, too, for the special energy they bring to their performances.

“It’s exciting to take off on this musical adventure with people of my own age,” he says, musicians with whom he will work throughout his career.

Jelleyman’s Vespro 2017, like Oram’s opening piece, takes its lead from the classics.

He describes it as finding new music amid the very old, grand creation of Monteverdi’s Vespers. Auckland audiences this year heard the young composer transforming a Gretchen Albrecht image into an evocative orchestral score for Auckland Philharmonia Orchestra’s Gallery of Sound project.

Both composers, in their own way, appreciate the continuity of the musical tradition.

“Music should know where it comes from,” Oram says.