{"id":1375,"date":"2017-10-24T17:43:36","date_gmt":"2017-10-24T17:43:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/?p=1375"},"modified":"2017-10-24T18:06:53","modified_gmt":"2017-10-24T18:06:53","slug":"the-youth-orchestra-and-ballet-school-project","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/2017\/10\/24\/the-youth-orchestra-and-ballet-school-project\/","title":{"rendered":"The Youth Orchestra and Ballet School Project"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Conversation on Growth and Opportunity for Young Creatives<\/em><\/h3>\n

by Brianna S\u00f6rne | Photography by Dave Barfield<\/p>\n

Our city continues expand with events, projects, and organizations that encourage meaningful engagement between diverse groups of the community. Now more than ever it is imperative for us to participate in the conversations that lead us to further discovery so that we may inspire and enlighten our future successors. As a lover of the arts and an advocate for their representation, I feel that more people in our community should be better informed about local projects that are contributing to the culture of our growing city, and the different ways it is beginning to manifest. One\u00a0such project is the collaboration between the Tallahassee Youth Orchestra and the Tallahassee Ballet School. I spoke with former Executive Director Achia Floyd and Dr. Alexander Jim\u00e9nez, Music Director, who are among many that have put forth much effort into inspiring and educating Tallahassee\u2019s youth groups towards truly special experiences and impressive workmanship. At the time of the writing of this article, both TYO and TBS rehearsed for a joint concert to showcase Ballet 2017, a work written by Pulitzer Prize-Winning composer Ellen Taaffe Zwillich, which Dr. Jim\u00e9nez specifically commissioned for the youth groups.<\/p>\n

Organizing a concert like Ballet 2017 means that the children of both groups were challenged to perform a professionally written artistic piece and present it to the people of Tallahassee as a message of what we can offer each other. The music doesn\u2019t follow a strict story or narrative, but rather is \u201can abstract modern piece meant to showcase the students and the fact that what they do is worthwhile and worth seeing, even if they\u2019re not professionals.\u201d The work also extends beyond the local stage, as it has been published and is available for orchestras to perform across the nation. TYO will have the rights for two years and their name will be on the first page of the published work. So while the project is showcase of artistic talent on a city level, it is also a statement to the country, on behalf of Tallahassee; an invitation for different platforms of creative collaboration. Following is an excerpt from my discussion of these topics with Dr. Jim\u00e9nez.<\/p>\n

What new opportunities do you hope this project will bring for TYO and TBS? What are you aiming to say on behalf of Tallahassee?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim\u00e9nez: \u201cWhat I hope is that the students, no matter what they do, they\u2019ll have the experiences of playing an instrument and also having been somewhat sensitized to other art forms. We hope that will affect them and that they\u2019ll have an appreciation; the audience too. We hope that through the publication of this work, that we can perhaps encourage other youth groups to do something similar, finding out where their local dance school is, and connecting\u2026 It elevates the conversation to something a little bit beyond the local environment.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why commission a Pulitzer Prize-winning composer to write a piece specifically for the youth groups?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim\u00e9nez: \u201cThere\u2019s a lack of music written by major composers for younger orchestras. Most of the music that\u2019s written for younger orchestras is written by people who sort of have a pedagogical approach to writing music; educators that perhaps have compositional background, and they\u2019re good composers, there\u2019s nothing wrong with them at all, but they\u2019re writing specifically for an educational purpose, and usually the pieces are graded in a certain way\u2026 we learn certain scales, certain rhythms, etc., but an artistic work for youth orchestra? That\u2019s what\u2019s missing\u2026 I\u2019m very, very fortunate to have a relationship with someone like Ellen Taaffe Zwilich. We\u2019ve worked together quite a bit, we\u2019ve recorded together, etc., so why not offer to this our kids? And I was fully expecting her to say \u2018No, I\u2019m not doing this.\u2019 She had quite the opposite reaction, which was, \u2018I think this is a great challenge.\u2019 This is a woman who has already sewed her professional oats internationally; there\u2019s no reason for her to do this. But she loved the concept of the students having the opportunity to interact with her, and interact in the creative process. So it moves beyond simply recreating music and puts them also in a situation where they are experiencing and appreciating what composers do\u2026 she wrote a work that is very appropriate for our orchestra that still is very much her music. That\u2019s part of the challenge. It\u2019s hard to write for a younger group and also say all the things you want to say as a great artist\u2026she\u2019s managed to do that, and I knew she would because she has that kind of craftsmanship.\u201d<\/p>\n

What differences do you see working with young musicians?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Jim\u00e9nez: \u201cWhat you get out of them, once you tap into them. Once they get going\u2014what they give you in energy, what they give you in passion\u2014[they\u2019re] in awe about what\u2019s happening, it\u2019s so rewarding. Sometimes a professional won\u2019t give you that, I mean they play really well and they don\u2019t miss anything, but\u2026they\u2019ve played that Beethoven symphony a hundred times, so unless you\u2019re doing something spectacularly different than what they\u2019ve done before, they\u2019ll go through it, they\u2019ll do it well, there\u2019s an audience out there, they\u2019ll collect a check, and we\u2019re done. These kids, it\u2019s a process of molding, shaping, discovery. And they are kids so they don\u2019t know what it is yet to walk off the street, sit down, and get to work, so sometimes it takes twenty minutes to get them moving, but once you do it\u2019s really a beautiful thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A Conversation on Growth and Opportunity for Young Creatives by Brianna S\u00f6rne | Photography by Dave Barfield Our city continues expand with events, projects, and organizations that encourage meaningful engagement between diverse groups of the community. Now more than ever it is imperative for us to participate in the conversations that lead us to further […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1385,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_cbd_carousel_blocks":"[]","footnotes":""},"categories":[310],"tags":[311,384,385],"class_list":["post-1375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arts","tag-ballet","tag-orchestra","tag-symphony"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1375"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1378,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1375\/revisions\/1378"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1385"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/tallahasseefamilymagazine.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}