hello and welcome to our show on princeton public access t v i'm jason about that a board member with youth orchestra of central jersey we're here today because we're celebrating our fortieth anniversary and we're excited about that we want to talk to you about how while c j has grown into a respected youth orchestra with more than two hundred student players that fill up nine report on some bowls orchestras and bands and we play throughout the area during the year would also like to tell you about the opportunities that could be available for students if you're a student player or if you'd like to come out to one of our orchestra one of our events would love to have you we especially are excited about our our highlight in the winter concert on january twenty first in which legendary new york philharmonic clarinet clarinetist stanley drucker will be joining us and featured there with us today our artistic director take over the string preparatory orchestra puts and so i i was a little bit on the young side then was very excited for the opportunity and she kind of ran me through this through the rigors of  what she had developed as an organization and i found that the talent and the energy it was just very very enticing and and that's how it all began and you know out and she got all her friends and to help her fill the ranks of the orchestra and i think if i can recall it was we did mendelssohn's reformation seven just like the last movement and it was just such a glorious sound and and that got along and we we felt like our group started growing and we had a high school division and then and then i asked phil pugh to come in and help me with the beginning part and i did the more advanced orchestra and those so the preparatory  straight since we had to me for one and then we had another one later currently i conduct a string preparatory orchestra which is our entry level orchestra of most of the upper elementary and we spent you know eating popcorn and watching the movie and just getting getting the kind of the ambiance of what the music was supposed to promote and and i think you had some special souls the horns you know you think i was very new to this i was really you know just flabbergasted that there is actual you know american paris car horns are supposed to to read to really get to the original you know the original sound and there's been some controversy you know in the past couple years that the actually have been the wrong pitches you know it is really but all this kind of interesting sidelights make it so  you know fascinating and intriguing for the students and and they have i would say the majority of them had never heard of gershwin's work and and and how you know colorful that it originally was meant to be you know that sort of thing so it was a great learning curve that we rode into the into that concert and other things like  have sections of we actually have when we call them choirs but but they're like sectionals of brass and woodwinds and percussion and and actually of saxophones which will talk about later but but by having those sections we could focus on the intricacies of like the percussion for american in paris is at and for bernstein's on the waterfront  tambour that has to be developed separately it at this age and so we have brass specialists teaching and and the we have also woodwind specialists to help us with you know your your fond memories of what's you know what you just mentioned at some of the professionals we've had telling us and this is been exciting because you know is that many of our students just are not exposed to this level of performing every year we take our students to hear a professional concert in your film monicker the philadelphia orchestra and it's great to see their eyes open up that's what a great orchestra sounds like and that is very inspiring for them also we've brought as you mentioned brought in soloists from these orchestras to perform with our orchestra to to teach master classes and it's very exciting when you see the level of our students with me as i teach the entry level orchestra and i see students come into our orchestra who play well and but they often have little and sometimes no orchestral experience and play an orchestra is is to us a big challenge for them and it's great to see their their eyes open up and to get really excited up play an orchestra but also to develop new skills so at first they may have a lot of difficulty and then through their hard work i see them progress as they move into the property orchestra and then in two or three products orchestra and then become quite advanced musicians after several years but not every student is aimed at a music career right there's a lot of students that you know they're strongly feel strongly about music really enjoy it and i do yeah and i even had one of our students come back a couple years ago to see me and he's a professor at a university and down teaching economics and he said just want you know that i still play my my violin every day gives me such joy and he thanked me for  he set us his composition that he had reduced the whole something down to like just one movement for us to play and we performed at our last concert of the year and then brought it to vienna for him to conduct and that experience was just electric for for the students first they had a young conductor and  wo to run them through a very energetic kind of peace that he that he sort of enjoys the composer likes the music of john williams and bernstein and so he sort of melded that into his own composition and it really spoke volumes to the students musicianship i think one of things that that special about these tours is they play music of aspect to the tours in that is we go to a part of the world where the students maybe never ben they've read about austria they've read about germany in berlin in their history books but when you actually go and you see there remains of the berlin wall in there and what happened there then you take what they've learned in school and you really connect it then it really comes home to them so that makes it extra special in just not just sort of musical aspect but just enriching then in their education and as people in general sure sure well we mentioned the prominent players that we've heard come with us you know can you talk a little bit elements of music is what we start with but our goal is the aesthetic and the art and and i think what happens is that we try to spiral from going from the fundamentals to to the art form to to that situation where we're we garner something that's more than the physical of playing and and  you know when we went to europe that was clear when we played with david camm that was a magical moment we that we did the t that's something we don't often do because of you know the lengths of music time we have to rehearse and this sort of thing but we really put our energy into this and and and it was just really magical for me when you know i felt the the the thrust of the of the musician has really got into that art form and and it was of kept by when i walked off the stage with david kim he said in the hallway he said john you know this i hope you realize it was something very very special and to have someone of that that stature of stature just say something as simple and elegant and to the point was that right after he performed the trick kosky violin concerto you know it was times a year september january and also in june and these are titians are open to any students and we can they can register for an audition directly on  website and on our website which is why a c j dot org we have all of our additional requirements and make it very simple for for the parents and students to register and  basically consists of some scales solo and some sight reading and then based on the audition we can tell that if they're accepted or not if they're not accepted which happens occasionally we tell them what we would like them to work on and we hope to see the and back again we usually do they come back in and with with their skills improved and if we accept and we tell him what group that we are going to assign them to school music teachers and actually most of our directors our staff work in the public schools and we're very dependent on the public schools for teaching the students starting them and then preparing them for audition those programs stronger so in essence we are strengthening each other person each other's program and the students that are with her orchestra often influence their friends and so we never have students audition kendall hall or we're down at the college of new jersey will have or a large wood or concert but john can you preview that force a little bit well certainly the symphony will be playing  years and he's still playing beautifully so it's and that sort of tap into that the energy and the experience and the knowledge of such a fresh and musician is something we're really looking forward to  in addition to that we're we're playing a couple planets of holst mars and jupiter as and and one of the things that still mention is that we go to the but also we're going to be performing some scenes from hope or doing something gretel which the philadelphia orchestra is going to be performing in december and so we thought it would be a special treat for the students to actually hear a professional orch information a lot of experience to draw and to help students and he's very interested in you know in passing that on it can be as it as it can be the fundamentals of  performance as well as the as i said before the art form of you know how do you create a phrase that speaks when you're when you're playing a wind instrument the there are certain kinds of physical qualities and certain kinds of psychological qualities that have to be tempered to to make that performance the final you know recital and one of the things that we emphasize with their master classes clarinet there's so much they can learn about good musicianship or castro playing practice skills stage presence and hearing that from someone of stanley director's experience and stature is very educational and and very important for students and anyone else who would like to come in here and master to explore those through well that's about all the time we have or today thank you for joining us  john and phil it's been great but we hope that you would like to find out more about why o c j and if you do please go to y o c j dot org we'd love to have you come to one of the concerts again december tenth that's a in stanley drucker which will be a very special in that concert will be on the january twenty first twenty first right which is also a sunday so we'd love to have you join us we hope that you will want to find out more about us and again if you have a student or you know some way to start their building on their music career thank you for joining us today and we look forward to perhaps coming back another time thanks thank