China Daily Global Edition (USA)
China moves to form national youth orchestra
The first national youth orchestra was founded in the United Kingdom in 1948. And the NYO of the United States started in 2013, as a project of CarnegieHall.
NowChina will have its own NYO: 100 young musicians from all over the country will take rehearsals and attend master classes and workshops atWest Connecticut StateUniversity in the US for two weeks, and finally play a formal concert at the Carnegie Hall on July 22, 2017.
Renowned artists including French conductor Ludovic Morlot and Chinese pianist Wang Yujia will work with the students for the concert.
Online auditions for NYO China started on Dec 17.
As part of the process, music students from China — ages 14-20 for the wind section and 14-19 for the other instruments — can make applications, by submitting their resumes, recommendation letters and video clippings of themselves playing to the official website Nyochina.org.
The videos will be sent to professional musicians from both China and the US. They will first be judged by conductor Morlot and NYO China’s artistic director Cai Jindong.
All the judges will also submit feedback to the students.
“Even if you are not confident about getting in, having a professional musician give you feedback is a great encouragement,” says Robert Blocker, the Henry and Lucy Moses dean of music at YaleUniversity, who is a senior adviser to NYO China.
NYO China is not just about performances, says Morlot, the conductor. “It is a deeper journey that will create lifelong relationships. An initiative like this can inspire a whole generation of young people.”
“These young musicians are going to play in the great concert halls of the world, working and making music with some of the most celebrated artists across the globe. This will be a transformative experience for them,” says Blocker.
The application window will open until Feb 28, and the results will be announced by April 2. Winners will have two weeks of playing and rehearsing together in the US.
Blocker says that being able to spend time with like-minded students is the thing that the members of NYO America appreciated the most.
Blocker also says he very much looks forward to the first rehearsal of NYO China.
“The first thing you do after checking in is to take your instrument, go to the rehearsal hall, and everybody is going to play together.”
For most of the students, it will be the first time they hear so many people of their age.
“It will completely open you up,” says Blocker. “When you see the light on their faces— it is life changing.”
Speaking at the launch of the NYO China project in Shanghai, Gary Locke, former US ambassador to China, says: “NYO China will bring people together through the common language of music. It will help break down barriers that exist between countries and promote understanding of each other’s culture and history.”
The idea for theNYOproject was born in 2015 when Chinese-American Danielle Accettola accompanied NYO USA on its debut tour to seven cities in China, which was sponsored by the Wailian Overseas Consulting Group.
Then, one-third of the young musicians on the trip were Asian, and Accettola saw how “their eyes lit up” when they saw China, the homeland of their parents and grandparents, for the first time.
Later, her son, Vincent Accettola, a graduate student at Harvard University and now the executive director of NYO China, inspired her to launch the NYO China project.
Speaking of how he got the idea, he says while there are national youth orchestras in Britain, Brazil, Singapore, France and the US, “there has never been a real national youth orchestra in China. So, why not start it, especially since China is a country with so much musical potential?”