YOSA and Beethoven Team Up for a Great Race

It’s not quite like singing for your supper, but it’s pretty close.

YOSA presents its second annual Beethoven 5K/10K Walk and Run on Saturday, April 13.  It’s an important fundraising event for our organization and we need your help to make it a success. We’re the only race in San Antonio with an orchestra at the finish line!

Beethoven 5K/10K Event Information:

• It’s an IAAP chip-timed race on a scenic course that begins and ends at Central Market on Broadway in Alamo Heights.
• Early registration is open now for $25 for the 5K and $35 for the 10K.  (Fees increase by $5 after April 1). Register today to help support YOSA’s musicians and programs by clicking here.
• Packets can be picked up at Fleet Feet Sports – our awesome race partner – on Friday April 12, from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m.
• The Saturday morning race begins at 8 a.m., with registration at 7 a.m.

We need all our fans, musicians, parents and supporters to spread the word about this event.

How Can you Support the Beethoven 5K?

Sponsorship is a great way to support our event. We have sponsorships starting at $250 and going all the way through to $10,000.  Do you know a person or company who can sponsor our event?  Share the sponsorship details with them here.

Another way you support our event is registering for the fun. We are very grateful to our partner Fleet Feet Sports for their support for the second year in a row.  This year, we’ve added a great promotional partner with Yelp San Antonio.  They will be promoting our race online and in person on race day. Watch for details about checking in on race day and the cool stuff Yelp will be giving away to participants. You can find YOSA on Yelp, too!

Finally, you can support the race virtually by purchasing a “Breakfast with Beethoven” package for just $35.  This gets you a tee shirt, mug and beverage mix on race day and you don’t even need to run!  This is a great way for relatives of YOSA students to show their support for our organization.

So what are you waiting for? Take a moment and see where you can share this story so our April 13 race is a sell-out!

Brahms Reimagined

Monday, February 11, 2013 7:30 p.m.
Trinity University’s Laurie Auditorium

Tickets available from Ticketmaster.

As a featured partner in the San Antonio Symphony’s 2013 Brahms Festival, the YOSA Philharmonic will collaborate with the Children’s Chorus of San Antonio  for a program of Brahms, transcribed and reimagined. Here are some notes on the program, written by YOSA Music Director Troy Peters.

Sheng: Black Swan

Born in Shanghai, Bright Sheng (born 1955) studied piano with his mother from age four before attending the Shanghai Conservatory. In 1982, he immigrated to the United States, becoming a protégé of Leonard Bernstein. He subsequently acquired another champion in Gerard Schwarz, who invited Sheng to serve as composer-in-residence at the Seattle Symphony from 1992 to 1994. Commissioned by the Seattle Symphony, Black Swan is a 2006 transcription for orchestra of a solo piano piece by Johannes Brahms, the Intermezzo in A major, Op. 118, No. 2. This song-like intermezzo, completed in 1893, conveys a feeling of serenity and deep tenderness, offset by the autumnal tone that pervades its central episode.

Brahms: Choral Works

In 1858, Brahms became the conductor of a women’s choir in his hometown of Hamburg. Struck by the relative paucity of appropriate repertoire, he wrote his first published choral work, a poignant Ave Maria with organ accompaniment. Less than a year later, he arranged the organ part for orchestra, adding some lovely woodwind lines. For the same women’s chorus, Brahms wrote four songs with the unusual accompaniment of harp and two horns in 1860. The Lied von Shakespeare, a melancholy song of unrequited love from Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, is the second of this set. In the summer of 1886, while vacationing in Thun, Switzerland, Brahms wrote an especially beautiful set of five songs for low voice and piano, inspired by his fondness for a young contralto named Hermine Spies. Brahms loved the melody of the first song, Wie Melodien zieht es mir, so much that he reused it in his Second Violin Sonata. More recently, California organist and conductor Brad Slocum arranged this song for chorus. Much lighter in character, Neckereien is an 1863 setting of a Moravian folk poem. Brahms’s original version for a quartet of solo voices transfers well to a larger chorus.

Brahms-Parlow: Hungarian Dances No. 5 & 6

Brahms was barely 20 years old when he accompanied the showy violinist Eduard Reményi on an 1853 concert tour around central Europe and fell in love with the propulsive Hungarian gypsy-style numbers that were Reményi’s specialty. For years afterwards, Brahms entertained party guests with piano improvisations on Hungarian gypsy melodies; by 1869, he finally gave in to his friends’ urging that he write some down and publish them. The Hungarian Dances (originally for piano four-hands) turned out to be a goldmine for Brahms and his publisher. After Brahms orchestrated three of the dances, his publisher commissioned other musicians (like the military bandmaster, Albert Parlow) to make orchestral arrangements of the remaining 18.

Brahms-Schoenberg: Piano Quartet No. 1 in G minor

Brahms also displayed his love of Hungarian gypsy music in the finale of his great G minor Piano Quartet. (A piano quartet, by the way, is not four pianos, but an ensemble of violin, viola, cello, and piano.) Completed in 1861, the quartet was premiered with Clara Schumann at the piano; Clara was the great love of Brahms’s life, the widow of his recently deceased friend and mentor, Robert Schumann. The music is passionate and expansive, with tremendous expressive range, one of the great masterpieces of romantic chamber music. Later, in the late 1930s, the Austrian composer Arnold Schoenberg was living in Los Angeles, where the music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic was German conductor Otto Klemperer. After Schoenberg proposed that he might orchestrate the G minor Piano Quartet to create a large-scale symphonic work, Klemperer introduced the new orchestration in 1937. Schoenberg claimed that he intended to “remain strictly in the style of Brahms and not to go farther than he himself would have gone if he lived today,” but many listeners raise an eyebrow at the occasional appearance of xylophone or muted brass, moments that pull the music squarely into the 20^th century.

Stop! And Feel the Music.

Hear it, too. YOSA’s unique fundraising event on Saturday, January 26 is NOT your average gala. In fact, it’s far from it. It’s part cabaret, part pop-up orchestra, plus extraordinary food and drink.

Our musicians will show you their contemporary side with YOSA musicians performing unique versions of pop and rock songs. The YOSA Pop-Up Orchestra, made up of some of the region’s very best young musicians from the YOSA Philharmonic, will entertain guests with some of the biggest recent pop hits, including “Call Me Maybe” and a local variation on “Gangnam Style,” as well as familiar rock classics.

Last summer, a video of YOSA musicians singing Gotye’s “Somebody That I Used to Know” while they were traveling to London went viral on YouTube. After a successful appearance at the Rock ‘n Roll San Antonio Marathon in November, YOSA has been working up a new set of songs.

Last week, YOSA musicians dropped in at Rackspace Hosting to thank them for their support by performing “Call Me Maybe” at their San Antonio offices in Wincrest.

We’ll also have some swell things to auction, led by San Antonio’s own “fancy pants” auctioneer Molly Cox.

Maybe you can show us some support…buy a ticket today by going here. It’s just $35 to you, but it means the world to our kids.  You can also donate a live or silent auction item or be an event sponsor.

Stop. And Feel the Music

Saturday, January 26

6:30 p.m. – 9 p.m.

The Radius Building

106 Auditorium Circle

San Antonio, TX 78205

P.S. Event seats are limited, so reserve yours today. With performers this good, it will be a sell-out.

YOSA receives $100,000 plus a Challenge Grant from the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation

Merry Christmas to us!

The Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA) got an early Christmas present this year, in the form of a grant from the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation.

The $150,000 award includes a$100,000 gift, plus a $50,000 challenge grant to cultivate new donors in 2013.  The Kronkosky Charitable Foundation will match dollar-for-dollar each new donor which YOSA cultivates by July 2013, up to an additional $50,000.  YOSA was one of many organizations receiving end-of-year grants in the region, some of which were highlighted in today’s Express-News.

The focus of the Kronkosky Charitable Foundation is to support programs, projects and collaborative efforts that reach as many people as possible; they support organizations in Bandera, Bexar, Comal and Kendall Counties. The foundation’s support of the arts is generous and forward thinking, as they look at the life-long impact that classical music study will have on a young musician.

“We are overwhelmed at the generosity of the Kronkosky Foundation,” says Steven Payne, Executive Director of YOSA.  “They recognize the financial challenges faced by arts organizations and believe in our mission to bring classical music to the youth of San Antonio. The potential for this grant – at $200,000 – is enormous for our organization.”

The news comes just 10 days after YOSA received a $10,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Arts to support the 2013 Artist-in-Residence program which will feature electric violinist Tracy Silverman and composer Kenji Bunch in the Texas premier of a new concerto for electric violin and orchestra.

The funds will be used for general operating expenses, the many things that are needed for YOSA to function efficiently and serve a maximum number of young musicians.  Grants like this one are increasingly important to YOSA, as many funders want to support specific program interests or fund capital needs.  General operating support allows YOSA to pay salaries, utility bills, and other necessary elements of its $1.2 million budget.

YOSA will begin its campaign to raise its portion of the $50,000 for the Challenge Grant in January.

YOSA receives NEA grant to support Artist-In-Residence Community Program

Earlier this week, we received the exciting news that we were the recipient of a $10,000 NEA Challenge America Fast-Track grant.  It’s an exciting and humbling experience and one we couldn’t wait to share with our YOSA supporters.

Only 153 organizations in the entire COUNTRY were recipients this time around, so it’s an especially good piece of news.  The focus of this type of grant is to support small to mid-sized organizations in projects which “extend the reach of the arts to populations whose opportunities to experience the arts are limited by geography, ethnicity, economics, or disability.”

This grant will support our 2013 Artist-in-Residence Program, which will feature several new components.

Electric violinist Tracy Silverman and composer Kenji Bunch will be featured in the Texas premier of a new concerto for electric violin and orchestra in November — an unparalleled opportunity for the YOSA Philharmonic. While in San Antonio, the pair will also work with underserved students in YOSA MÁS,(Music After School), a program in conjunction with the Good Samaritan Community Services in San Antonio’s near west side.  Similarly, YOSA is establishing school partnerships for Silverman and Bunch to lead workshops for the 440 string students in the Roosevelt Compact of the NEISD and at Judson High School.  The residency will culminate in a concert at the Majestic Theatre.

“To say that we are excited and grateful for this grant would be an understatement,” says Steven Payne, Executive Director of YOSA.  “The NEA’s support of our program will create new opportunities for hundreds of student musicians in San Antonio, many of whom would never have an opportunity to meet and work with musicians of the caliber of Tracy Silverman and Kenji Bunch. For YOSA, to be part of the Orchestra Engagement Lab, which integrates community engagement into the process of commissioning new music is equally as exciting.”

Stay tuned for confirmed dates and details on the project early next year.

Time for Symphony in a Stocking

No, we’re not jamming all our performers into socks this holiday season. What we ARE doing is combining the best delights of the holiday season and raising money for our musicians at the same time.

YOSA violinist Wolfie Draving performed last week at Rackspace to preview Symphony in a Stocking during Rackers lunch hour

And we just made your holiday shopping simpler. Symphony in a Stocking is a traditional stocking filled with treats for the season together with a “best of” YOSA CD and other memorabilia.

They are yours for just $75 each –$40 is tax deductible as a donation to the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio.

Give the gift of music, food and beverage and we’ll continue to keep the music coming for the more than 1,500 musicians we serve each year.

Here’s how to get yours:

IN PERSON: We’ll be selling the stockings at the Historic Maverick Carter Home on Tuesday Dec.  4 from 4 to 8 p.m. If you stop by, you’ll enjoy live music by our musicians and see our YOSA Christmas tree all decked out with ornaments from our community supporters.

BY PHONE: We can take your order by phone during business hours by calling: (210) 737-0097.

These gifts will sell out early, so don’t wait to order yours.  Every stocking purchase helps keep the music alive with hundreds of young musicians this year from all over San Antonio.

Here’s wishing you great holiday music from the team at Youth Orchestras of San Antonio.

Did You Get an Ornament in the Mail?

Maybe you got an ornament from YOSA in the mail.  It might have looked like the picture to the right.

Toni Kyle with the YOSA ornament and poinsettia.

Please fill it out and send it back! We are trying to deck the halls, or at least our tree, with as many YOSA ornaments as the ol’ tannenbaum will bear.

We’ll share your YOSA wishes on our Facebook page and  we’ll be posting photos regularly there  as we overload the conifer.

We won’t mind if you include a little Christmas present for YOSA, too.

Happy holidays from YOSA!

Freudigman Makes Conducting Debut

Ken Freudigman, director of the YOSA Symphony

Kenneth Freudigman, principal cello of the San Antonio Symphony, will debut as director of the Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA) Symphony on Sunday at Roosevelt High School as part of YOSA’s City Series.

Freudigman’s first concert will include pieces from Rossini, Holst and Sibelius and he will guest conduct the Sinfonettia Strings in Beethoven, Mozart, Bernofsky, and Jackson.

He is well known in the San Antonio music scene, having co-founded Camerata San Antonio as well as serving as its artistic director. He is also an adjunct professor of cello at UTSA and is the former Education Director of the Cactus Pear Music Festival.

Freudigman studied cello at Interlochen Center for the Arts and Eastman School of Music. He began his orchestral and chamber music career with the Rochester Philharmonic and as a founding member of the Esterhazy Chamber Ensemble. In 1992, he joined the New World Symphony, under the direction of Michael Tilson Thomas. He has also performed with the Grand Rapids, Charleston, and Virginia Symphony Orchestras, as well as the Sarasota Opera and the Mexico City Philharmonic.

He has been working with the 90 young musicians in the Symphony since August and is enjoying it.

“I am looking forward to passing on my passion for music to the next generation. I feel it’s important for professionals to be mentors to young musicians and to pass on the years of training and experience and tradition that we received from our mentors,” says Freudigman. “In many ways, this is an oral tradition that has been handed down from teacher to student for hundreds of years.”

The program, which will be presented this Sunday, November 11 at Roosevelt High School at 5 p.m., was intended to challenge the students.

“There are three works on this program and they’re all about team-building. This program was designed not only for the musical enjoyment of the students, they’re learning ensemble skills within their related sections and throughout the entire orchestra,” Freudigman says. “They’re learning how to listen to each other, fit their parts together and adjust to one another.”

On the program this Sunday are:  The Overture to the Barber of Seville by Giacchino Rossini in an arrangement by Merle J. Isaac; St. Paul Suite by Gustave Holst and Finlandia by Jean Sibelius.

Even though he’s only been working with this group of teenagers for three months, they have made quite an impression on Freudigman.

“What would have surprised me is if these kids hadn’t stepped up. I had very high expectations and believed fully that they would step up to the challenge of performing this very challenging program.”

The City Series concert is free and open to the public and will be held in the Roosevelt High School auditorium at 5110 Walzem Road at 5 p.m. on Sunday, November 11.

On Stoltzman, Composers and a Passion for Music

YOSA’s Gold Series Concert, “Stoltzman’s America,” is a unique chance to sample the breadth and depth of American music, including sounds of jazz, Broadway, and classical music. No one is more qualified to preview the first concert of the season than Music Director Troy Peters. Here are his thoughts on the November 5 concert at the Majestic Theatre.

“The first half of the program focuses on two of our most beloved composers: Leonard Bernstein and George Gershwin, including music from the classic musicals Porgy and Bess, Candide, and West Side Story,” says Peters.  “The second half features two Pulitzer Prize winning composers, Jennifer Higdon and Howard Hanson. Higdon and Hanson are both romantic, expressive composers, whose music is full of beautiful melodies and inspiring crescendos.”

“The real magic, though, comes from seeing San Antonio’s best young musicians bring this music to life,” says Peters. “There’s nothing like the energy that rolls off the stage when young musicians are sharing their newly discovered passion for a great piece of music.”

Clarinetist Richard Stoltzman is such a dynamic performer that the Boston Globe hailed him as “the most exciting clarinetist in the world” and the San Francisco Chronicle called him “a national treasure.”

“Stoltzman moves seamlessly between classical and jazz styles, and our audience will hear him improvising and embellishing on familiar tunes by Bernstein and Gershwin,” says Peters. “He is one of the most charismatic and engaging performers I have ever seen play live, so I know our audience is in for a treat.”

Jennifer Higdon’s blue cathedral has a personal connection for Peters.

“Jennifer Higdon is not only one of the most widely hailed composers of her generation, but also an old friend of mine. Jennifer and I went to college together at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music in the late 1980s, and later we were co-directors of a concert series called Perpetuum Mobile,” says Peters.

“After catching up with Jennifer over coffee in Philadelphia last week, I was able to bring back new insights into her beautiful orchestral work, blue cathedral,” according to Peters. “This piece is a sensation, by the way, having performed by more than 400 orchestras over the last dozen years. Jennifer memorialized her younger brother in this beautiful music, a radiant vision of heaven.”

No music lover will want to miss this exciting performance.

Tickets to the November 5 concert at the Majestic Theatre are on sale now at Ticketmaster.

Tune in to Classical Spotlight on Texas Public Radio’s KPAC on Nov. 1 at 1 p.m. to hear John Clare interview Richard Stoltzman.  http://www.tpr.org/programs/classicalspotlight.html.

Wales, Rugby, and Roman Baths!

Musicians at Stonehenge spelling out “YOSA!”

From Darian Thomas:

            I’m really glad I’m a part of this orchestra. Both of the performances we’ve put on have been some of the most impressive performances that I’ve been a part of up to date. The concert we performed at Covenant Presbyterian back in San Antonio was more of what I was used to, and it was still a good performance. But the second we played the Walton in Liverpool… I was pleasantly surprised, to say the least. By the end of the concert I was having the time of my life playing as well as I could to make sure that we could leave a powerful taste of America here in England.

            I have noticed a pattern, though: we tend to have an exciting and mobile day full of sightseeing and interesting meandering before our rehearsal (which is before our concert). The rehearsal then ends up being this very tired process in which everyone feels like they’re only focusing on notes. We sound good at rehearsal, but it’s not exciting. Then we go eat dinner and rest. When we get to the stage afterwards and start the first piece: vibrancy, warmth, humanity, excitement, joy; pure, unadulterated, visceral emotions. There are moments where I have to look up at the orchestra to make sure I’m still in the same group. YOSA has come so far from when I started the Philharmonic four years ago!

            So all of that’s great. In addition to this: I’m pretty sure I need to live in England or Wales. Cardiff is one of the best cities I’ve ever been to, because the people and buildings are all so amazing. And I got to share a wonderful lunch with Joe, Vivien, Ben, Alexis, and Sinead at a really cool pub called The Cottage! Also wandering around the mall in the evening with Vivien, Chris, and Samantha was a fun adventure that led to getting Ice Cream from Cadwallader’s and pastries from a nearby café. Cardiff easily turned into one of my favorite cities!

            After that was a tour around Bath, which turned out to be just as beautiful as the other cities we’ve visited. The way the wind winds through the streets, and the sound of the Church bells traveling in a sunny but cool air (that I can only properly describe as the feeling of a sunny day near Thanksgiving) was so serene… I wish I had brought manuscript paper along with me so that I could at least attempt to sketch how these cities feel, because no photograph will be able to accurately portray it. Even still, I’m getting closer and closer to having a thousand photos, and I’m trying my hardest to capture the essence of this amazing country through film/iPhone! Regardless of whether I succeed or not, I’m definitely going to try to go to school and/or live here at some point in my future. Everyday feels like a weeklong dream, and I feel incredibly fortunate to be here. I’m so glad I got to be in this trip, and I LOVE YOSA for giving me this opportunity!

From Gaby Barera:

England has really been spectacular!  Yesterday, the group was in Cardiff, I was especially excited for this day because we were visiting the famous MILLENIUM STADIUM!  It was amazing.  We toured the locker rooms and listened to a recording of a coach giving his rugby team a speech, and got to take pictures of signed jerseys, my personal favorite being the Barcelona Jersey signed by some of my favorite players, Puyol, Ronaldinho, and Xavi!  Then, the tour guide, fooling us with her nonchalant behavior, opened up a door and stunned us by letting us walk down the players tunnel to some REALLY epic music.  I will probably never be closer to a professional pitch than I was yesterday.  As for you Facebook lovers, you can understand that I now have the most amazing cover photo for my profile of the stadium.  We also got to pose with an actual rugby trophy and sit in a private box where the Queen, Prince William, Prince Harry, and Prince Charles have previously sat.

After our rehearsal that afternoon we were released to go have dinner.  I decided to head off with Sophia, Armando, and Alexis to go get some Papa Johns.  The pizza box was conveniently used for an umbrella as England gave us a taste of its much-warned-about rainy weather.  The concert itself went very well, and everyone played with a lot of enthusiasm even though our audience was small (about 15 people).  I feel that even though we didn’t have the large crowd we were hoping for, we did bring some musical joy into the hearts of the audience.

            During the concert, something quite unexpected happened: the bus got broken in to!  At first, two of the students thought that their stuff had gone missing, but they later discovered that it was all actually in their hotel room.  Unfortunately, the same could not be said for the bus driver, who had all of his items stolen.

            After a good night’s sleep, Sophia and I went down to breakfast, where we were greeted by a very nice lady, who we later learned from the hotel concierge that she was actually a “he” and was a cross dresser!  I probably had the most interesting breakfast of my life as the “lady” enthusiastically talked to us about how she had been out clubbing all night and that she didn’t even belong to the hotel.  She then proceeded to try to convince me to get my “money’s worth” out of the hotel and take all the mini muffins (don’t worry, I didn’t).

            Once on the bus, the group proceeded to the beautiful town of Bath.  As you may or may not know, the town’s name originates from the historical remains of the Roman Baths that were created years ago when the Romans discovered hot springs coming from the earth.  The waters are said to have mineral properties that can cure ailments by either drinking or bathing in the water.  We also had the chance to tour the Roman Bath houses and even drink some of the water from the spring.  Sadly, I was unable to drink any of the water since I (due to my terrible sense of direction) could not locate the pump.

            After Bath, we visited the place I was looking forward to the most: Stonehenge!!  The rocks were all that they had lived up to in the countless photos and documentaries I had seen on them.  My own photos don’t even seem real to me as the whole experience was very surreal.  One highlight (besides the AMAZING monoliths) was when Bond, Mikey, and Tommy convinced Mr. Peters to let them try to hoist him up on their shoulders.   Lets just say it didn’t go very well, but you may find some photos or videos of the incident appearing on Facebook sometime soon! We were able to visit the souvenir shop, where I got a necklace with ring of blue stone on it.  What was significant about the rock was that even though the ring was not made of actual Stonehenge rock, it came from the same quarry filled with the rare rock that Stonehenge came from.

            At the moment, we are siting on the bus on our way to London, and I’m thinking that I would like to catch some sleep on the long ride ahead.  England, so far, has lived up to all of my expectations.  Even the street signs are a lot of fun.  I’m serious when I say I saw a yield sign with a bowler hat in it.  I’m glad that I’m not up front giving directions because when I see rectangular signs with just random dashed lines in them, I panic.  Besides the signs, I love learning the new terms they have here.  When I visited Starbucks, the cashiers unsuccessfully tried to explain what “brown sauce” to me was, but when I tried it, all it ended up to be was Bar-B-Q sauce!  From “take-away” (take out) to “trousers” (pants) and “jumpers”(jackets) to “trainers,” (shoes) Englanders may speak our language, but it really is another country!

            Tonight after dinner, I hope to meet up with a couple of friends to watch the England game and just wind down after a long day.  I miss my home in Texas, but when the trip ends, I’m definitely going to miss this wonderful scenery, weather, and incredibly nice people of England and Wales!

A shot from our group dinner: