How’s this for youthful enthusiasm?
That’s the 2011 contingent of the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, entertaining Montrealers with a flash mob in front of Notre-Dame basilica.
+++
It’s the week of yearly critical reminiscences.
In my first installment, I want to recall my favourite visit of 2011, when the National Youth Orchestra invited me to their pre-concert-tour boot camp at University of Western Ontario.
I had a literal blast — as much from the swirl of youthful energy, as from the devotion of the group’s leaders, mentors and small army of support staff that allow logistical challenges like this to come of smoothly.
As an aide-mémoire, here is the story I wrote in the Star last summer:
LONDON, ONT.—“When I write my autobiography, I’m going to call it, ‘I Woke Up Screaming,’ ” says Barbara Smith.
She then breaks into laughter as she ponders the joys and challenges of being in charge of the country’s flagship summer project for young musicians.
Smith really should call her book “I Discovered the Fountain of Youth.” But it takes a few hours for me to realize that.
We’re sitting in the Faculty of Music’s Talbot Hall on the pastoral campus of the University of Western Ontario, surrounded by a mad jumble of sights and sounds as the National Youth Orchestra congregates for one of its twice-daily full-ensemble rehearsals. Coming close to the end of three weeks of intense work that Smith aptly calls a boot camp, the stage in front of us still buzzes with inexhaustible energy and enthusiasm.
These young people, who range in age from 16 to about 25, are culled by rigorous audition from 500 applicants. All are first-class artists, even though many of them haven’t yet begun university. Many are kids, meaning they need far more oversight than grown-ups.
“This is a microcosm of what you’ll find out there,” Smith says, detailing the personal crises endemic to hormonal teens, gathered from the four corners of Canada.
There are physical challenges, too.
Many of the younger orchestra members are not used to the hours of daily practice time — on their own, with a mentor, in small ensembles and as a full orchestra preparing two separate, substantial concert programs. Achy joints and sore muscles are common.
“We started with about 12 ice packs,” Smith smiles. “I think we have a couple left.” Apparently, the resident nurse had to put up a sign-out sheet on the refrigerator to keep track of who needs cold therapy.
So there have been lectures about saving precious limbs from injury. Tips on proper nutrition arrive alongside suggestions on how to smoothly bow long, sustained notes in a Mahler symphony.
It’s life skills and music skills all rolled into one, big, bouncy ball.
Acting on their own initiative, members of the brass and percussion sections even organized a musical flash-mob surprise to greet this year’s conductor, Vancouver Opera music director Jonathan Darlington.
There aren’t too many places where teens and young adults can enjoy a summer of good, clean fun while challenging their creative side and learning the joys of collaboration. Then they get to step in front of a paying audience who wants to hear the classics done well.
Despite the need to stay on top of a gruelling schedule and the logistics of a 10-city tour, Smith wouldn’t trade this yearly marathon for anything.
Here are some of Canada’s top orchestral musicians, who could easily choose a few weeks’ rest, travel or embark on their own summertime music projects. Instead, they have turned their July over to passing along hard-won wisdom and expertise to a new generation.
It’s almost a rite of passage for classical musicians in Canada: Four out of every 10 orchestral players in the country were once members of the National Youth Orchestra. Most eagerly pay the joy forward: So much so that after each full day of teaching, faculty members present a concert of their own.
On this night, principal and assistant principal players from the Vancouver, Montreal, Toronto and Kitchener-Waterloo symphony orchestras have prepared a program of chamber music that includes R. Murray Schafer’s Theseus — a piece that would tax the finest musicians after hours of practice time.
After a hooting, hollering standing ovation from the kids, everyone retires to the same university dorm.
As the young people (hopefully) drift off to sleep as midnight looms, the adults congregate in a student lounge, passing wine, crackers and cheeses as they share a stream of anecdotes and helpful shop talk distilled from decades of life in the trenches.
As retired Vancouver Symphony principal horn Brian G’froerer recalls from his stints with the National Youth Orchestra in the early 1960s, and his musical adventures in the intervening decades, I realize that each of these seasoned veterans gets as much out of the young people as the students get out of their mentors.
The clock doesn’t just magically stop for a few summertime weeks, but moves backward as experience bumps up against a thirst for knowledge and adventure. While the young players charge, the mentors recharge. This really is the fountain of youth.
John Terauds
- Classical Music 101: What Does A Conductor Do? - June 17, 2019
- Classical Music 101 | What Does Period Instrument Mean? - May 6, 2019
- CLASSICAL MUSIC 101 | What Does It Mean To Be In Tune? - April 23, 2019
