Four of the top students from the 2008/09—80th Season Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s Young Artists Competition will perform with Music Director and Conductor George Hanson and the TSO at the Celebrate the Future concert on Friday, May 1 at 7:00 pm at the Tucson Music Hall.
Mr. Hanson and the Tucson Symphony Orchestra will also perform two works by students from the TSO’s Young Composers Project. This year’s Celebrate the Future concert is free. Donations for this concert and other TSO education and youth programs are welcome at the door.
The participating Young Artist Competition performers were chosen by James Karrer, principal bass; Rebecca Cain, bassoonist and Tucson Symphony Orchestra orchestra personnel manager; Ann Weaver, principal viola; Kimberly Toscano, principal timpanist; Alexander Lipay, principal flute, and George Hanson, TSO Music Director and Conductor. The Young Artists Competition is unique because it is the only competition in the region where the winner may have a chance to perform with a professional symphonic orchestra.
TSO’s Young Composers Project provides a living laboratory for elementary through high school aged students to learn to compose music for orchestra. It is a rarity nationally because it is designed for elementary and secondary aged students, for its comprehensive program content, and because the professional orchestra will perform student compositions written during its year-long Young Composers Project. In 2008, the TSO’s Young Composers Project was the only local music education program to receive a National Endowment for the Arts grant for the 2008/09 school year.
The $15,000 grant was awarded in the Learning in the Arts for Children and Youth field, a discipline so competitive that the Tucson Symphony Orchestra was one of only two organizations in Arizona to receive funding. Even more remarkable, the TSO received the full amount it requested. In reaching the decision to fund the Young Composers Project, the NEA praised the high level of composition by young participants, the strong quality of the arts education and learning, and the setting of goals for youths to achieve.
Ilona Vukovic-Gay, Tucson Symphony Orchestra Assistant Principal Viola, who has been the Young Composers Project instructor for the past three years, describes the weekly class as “painting with sound.” The class begins with basic theory and compositional techniques followed by improvisation with other members of the class. This helps the student practice theoretical skills and share musical ideas.
In addition to the two Young Composers Project works, “Wanderer’s Requiem” by Elly Krepp and “Chubasco” by Nicholas Mariscal, the Celebrate the Future program will open with the Overture to Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro and include Suite No. 1 from Bizet’s Carmen and Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries before concluding with Rossini’s William Tell Overture.
The Celebrate the Future participants are:
Elly Krepp, composer, is 17 years old and a junior at Canyon Del Oro High School. She plays viola in the Northwest Intergenerational Community Orchestra, the CDO school orchestra, Tucson Philharmonia Youth Orchestra, and Tucson Junior Strings; she also enjoys playing guitar, violin, and mandolin. Elly has been composing for about four years, independently and with the Young Composers Project. She hopes to attend Northern Arizona University and study music, composition, or journalism. “Wanderer's Requiem” is her favorite piece she has written so far, but she is continuing to work on several symphonies and small ensembles.
Nicholas Mariscal, composer and cellist, is a junior at University High School. He began his musical career studying piano as part of the after school program at Holladay Art Magnet elementary school where he discovered his passion for music at an early age. Today Nicholas studies cello, piano and classical composition; he participates in a number of school and community based music activities that provide performance experience. Nicholas is interested in studying cello performance and composition in college. In the 2007/08 season, the TSO performed his “Espejos del Sur” on a MasterWorks Chamber Orchestra series concert. He will perform the prelude from Eduardo Lalo’s Concerto for Violoncello in D minor and the orchestra will perform his composition, “Chubasco.”
Shelby Yuan, piano, is a sixth grader in the GATE program at Doolen Middle School. She has been playing the piano since age four under the tutelage of Ms. Angeline Ng. Her favorite composers are Franz Joseph Haydn and Dmitri Shostakovich. At the 2006 Celebrate the Future concert, Shelby performed a movement from Haydn’s Piano Concerto in D major with the TSO. This year, she will perform a movement from Dmitri Shostakovich’s Piano Concerto No. 2. Shelby also plays harp with the Tucson Philharmonia Youth Orchestra and the violin with the Doolen Middle School Orchestra. When she is not playing any of these musical instruments, she enjoys swimming with the El Dorado Aquatics Club and loves painting, reading and math.
Derek Granger, saxophone, is currently pursuing his Bachelor’s of Music Degree in Saxophone Performance and Music Education at the University of Arizona. In 2008, Granger was awarded first prize in the MTNA Southwest Young Artist Solo Competition. He currently holds principal positions in the University of Arizona Wind Ensemble and the Arizona Contemporary Ensemble. As a member of the award-winning Catalina Quartet, Derek has given recitals and residencies throughout the southwest, and in Mexico and Canada. He can be heard with the Catalina Quartet performing on the Arizona University Recordings series entitled “America’s Millennium Tribute to Adolphe Sax,” volume XIV. On the Celebrate the Future program, he will perform a movement from Jacques Ibert’s Concertino da camera.
Taiko Ezaki, violin, was born in Tokyo, Japan and in 2003 moved with his family where he is in third grade at Manzanita Elementary School. Taiko began his violin studies at age three at the Tucson Music and Dance Academy. In his young career, nine-year-old Taiko has been recognized for his expressive technique, winning first place in the Tucson Chamber Orchestra Young Artist Competition and second place in the Tucson Civic Orchestra in 2008. Taiko had his orchestral solo debut last year with the Tucson Chamber Orchestra at the Fox Theater in Tucson, igniting a desire to play more with an orchestra. In 2008 he won first place in the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Artist Competition. He will perform a movement from Johann Sebastian Bach’s Concerto for Violin No. 1.
Nicholas Mariscal’s performance of Lalo’s Concerto for Violoncello will be conducted by Jackson Warren; Derek Granger’s performance of Ibert’s Concertino da camera will be conducted by Keitaro Harada. Mr. Warren and Mr. Harada are the two inaugural conducting fellows of the James E. Rogers Institute for Orchestral and Opera Conducting at The University of Arizona School of Music. As a Rogers fellow they will regularly conduct the School of Music’s Arizona Symphony Orchestra and UA Philharmonic under the mentorship of Thomas Cockrell and Charles Bontrager and serve as apprentice conductors with the Tucson Symphony Orchestra and Arizona Opera.
Launched in 1987, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra Young Artists Competition continues to draw many fine young musicians from throughout Arizona, grade school through college age. This year, 50 musicians in three age divisions participated.
Since 1993, the Tucson Symphony Orchestra’s Young Composers Project has produced more than 150 new works by young composers. Participants meet bi-weekly during the year, work with TSO musicians, attend TSO rehearsals, and meet with guest artists and composers, all culminating in a reading, performance and recording of their newly composed pieces by the Tucson Symphony Chamber Orchestra and String Quintet. -- www.tucsonsymphony.org
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