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Community Corner

American Youth Symphony Launches 2013-14 Season with Free Concert

The acclaimed American Youth Symphony
(AYS), one of the nation’s leading professional
training orchestras for musicians ages 15 to 27, launches its 49th season with
a free concert featuring the highly anticipated West Coast premiere of Timothy
Andres’ Bathtub Shrine, Tchaikovsky’s
elegant Variations on a Rococo Theme,
showcasing rising star Allan Steele, AYS’s Principal Cello, and Berlioz’ epic Symphony fantastique on Sunday, October
6, 2013, 7 pm, at UCLA’s Royce Hall.  
Music Director Alexander Treger, currently in his 16th season leading
AYS, conducts the 106-member orchestra, noted for its innovative programming
and inspiring performances.



 



Also featured is a free
pre-concert screening at 5:30 pm of the film Keeping Score: Symphony fantastique, part of the San Francisco
Symphony’s critically applauded Keeping
Score
film series, which, narrated by Michael Tilson Thomas, tells the
story of Berlioz’ purportedly opium-fueled obsession with Irish actress Harriet
Smithson for whom his love, passion and jealousy drove the groundbreaking
symphony’s creation.  Berlioz’ work was
debuted at the Paris Conservatoire in 1830, quickly becoming an audience and
orchestra favorite.

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“The program is designed to
highlight the exceptional talents of the orchestra as well as to provide our
musicians with critical training in some of the major orchestral repertoire and
contemporary works,” says Treger, who during the 2013-14 season leads a total
of five free concerts as well AYS’s annual gala concert. 

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Andres – hailed by the Los Angeles Times for music that
demonstrates “a strong sense of building on classical music tradition, while
also moving that tradition into a new and hip place” – composed Bathtub Shrine on a commission by the
Yale Symphony Orchestra as a playful response to the widely reverberating
acoustics of Yales’ Woosley Hall, which Andre’s describes as having “a
staggering 13-second reverberation…the effect of a giant bathroom.”  He also wrote the eight-minute piece in
homage to the orchestra’s “fierce music-making” and warm
“camaraderie”.



 



AYS has trained more than
2,300 musicians since it was founded, and many of its alumni hold principal
positions with the world’s top orchestras, the Chicago Symphony, Los Angeles
Philharmonic, New York Philharmonic and San Francisco Symphony, among
them.  Additionally, AYS’s free concert
series, which has drawn more than a quarter of a million people to the Royce
Hall since its inception, provides vital music outreach to the community. 



 



This season AYS also
appears on the “Sundays Live at LACMA” concert series on October 20, 2013;
presents “The Elfman Project II,” the continuation of a three-year exploration
of the composer’s brilliant music, on November 24, 2013; showcases the
irrepressible music of composer Jefferson Friedman on February 9, 2014; hosts
the “Springtime in Paris” gala on March 9, 2013; and wraps the season with “The
Alumni Project,” where fellows will share a stand with celebrated alumni in
Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony. This
season finale concert will also feature gifted young violinist Nigel Armstrong,
a finalist in the 2011 Tchaikovsky
International Competition and former AYS Concertmaster.



 



Reservations are recommended but not
required for the American Youth Symphony’s free concert at Royce Hall.  Royce Hall is located on the campus of UCLA
at 10745 Dickson Plaza in Westwood, CA, 90095. 
For more information, please call (310)
470-2332 or log on to www.AYSymphony.org.







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