and welcome to our show on princeton public access t v i'm jason methot a board member with youth orchestra of central jersey we're taping the show today because we're celebrating our fortieth anniversary this year and we're very excited about it we want to tell you about what makes a y o c j unique we are a youth orchestra of two hundred students that philip nine and samples symphonies and bands we pay to play throughout the  area during the year at various locations are large concerts are at the college of new jersey we hope that by the end of the show you will decide to come out and see one of our concerts or if you are a parent or a student player  may decide that you'd like to take advantage of the opportunity while c j today we want to talk about what makes y o c j unique and for that we have dr jordan smith who who is the conductor for our saxophone choir which may be the only sex choir in the country youth sex choir in the country it is it is a rare feature we also talk about the other smaller  s that we have jordan worship tell us a little bit about yourself start sure i'm a i'm a saxophonist by trade and i went to school close by at the college in new jersey for my undergraduate  travel to new york city like a lot of musicians and spent time at manhattan school of music for my masters and then kind of came full circle back to rutgers university and when i when i came back to record university that's when i started working with w i and in addition to that i have a private studio that in the area i live overnights town new jersey myself but i have students that are from south brunswick princeton montgomery kind of all over the place and i also teach at st peters university so lots of driving is the moral of the story you're very very busy well let's talk about this aspect about why is he a there's many youth orchestras out there and they when they go they do a great job  o so why c j started off like most youth orchestras in that it was an orchestra there are many different youth orchestras that are throughout the county central new jersey north and south jersey and  one thing that why was he jay started about fifteen or twenty years ago was the idea of first having a wind symphony so having a band like a typical band that you would have in school for your children as a way to offer wins and brass players and percussion players something to do if they weren't in the orchestra and then the idea was ok what do we do with the saxophone players we've got a lot of saxophone players in this area there's something very unique about central new jersey in particular that there are just a lot of sax some players and so my predecessor came up with the idea of kind of breaking off and having the smaller ensembles and so now at this point we've got we've got small sax ensembles flute flute ensembles brass ensembles percussion ensembles we've got really something for everyone and i think that's what makes us one hundred percent unique now we're going to see you know in the viewer can come see these and sawmills on december tenth at the college of new jersey in the mail hall which is very intimate you know intimate setting sounds great can you can you preview that a little bit for something tell us about  what's happening in the summer twelve to well sure so every season y a c j has has two concerts that we set up so we have usually what we call our small ensembles concert this is in the smaller venue that ensemble and in our would one choir as well so that's going to be a chance for you to see the smaller chamber music groups and then in january which we'll talk about a little bit later is when we have our small our large ensembles perform preview some of the music that will be in the december tenth concert sure sure the the younger saxophone group that i run it's called the saxophone ensemble one of the pieces that we're going to be playing is world premiere of this particular arrangement originally the pieces for choir for voices and it's been changed now so that you can play with a saxophone ensemble so it's going to be a really exciting experience for the  ok that sounds exciting and then also we should mention for the audience that we have the winter concert on january twenty first coming up that is our of our premier event for the year who will feature  we play with professional musicians in that winter concert it will feature legendary new york philharmonic clarinetist stanley drucker who served with the new york philharmonic for sixty years i think the longest serving member of that maybe any major orchestra anywhere and he's coming out of retirement to play with us i mean you know can you does that the can talk about the excitement of that event yeah i think that's going to be just an incredible experience we had one of the things that we try to do it was he jay every years we try to bring in some sort of soloist either from the philadelphia orchestra or the new jersey symphony this is the first time we've ever had anyone from the new york philharmonic and and like you said many times it's someone who's an active soloist who's an active performer in a way stanley drucker's just sort of and the name on to him self to him self like you said he's been he performed with them for just for decades and he's going to be doing the vapor clarinet concerto which is going to be just a wonderful piece in the clarinet repertoire and i think is going to be a really really exciting event he's also going to getting a master class to later on in the spring where he's going to be working with our clarinet students and some of the other would win students one on one on stage while the rest of the audience is able to kind of you and see how he works or the students and saxophone program it was c j it started off actually as a saxophone for tat that was the idea and and so at this point now that was over over fifteen years ago it started off as  as just a saxophone quartet and as more and more students became interested in it it kind of turned into this idea of having a saxophone ensemble and the idea for sax ensembles actually been around for a long time actually really since the saxon itself was invented which is kind of cool i remember when i was when i was just doing some research into the saxophone if you look at like the pattern from when the saxophone was invented it shows like the saxophones put together as a family of instruments kind of like you would think of as the string family or the brass family and so when adolf sax invented the sax when he was thinking you know i want to have an orchestra just of saxophones to that was kind of this idea  and this was really picked up in the twentieth century by a sax honest named figure rusher and and him in a lot of his his students that he worked with they when when many of them went off and began teaching it at universities and colleges they started the saxophone ensembles at those universities so it's something that you see a lot at the university level rutgers university has a saxon ensemble as does t c j but it's not something that you see for younger students one of the things two things that we have i think that make make our program unique is that we offer students the ability to perform on so for any know all the way through a saxophone  i can tell you from my experience i've never i had never seen a bass saxophone until i was in graduate school that's thing looks like the student who do plays that looks like they're carrying a car i mean is today so it's just so large yeah yeah so  jazz and it has such a rich history and jess definite want to downplay that at all but when you think about the saxon was invented in the romantic era eight hundred thirty eight jazz was not really an art form until the one nine hundred ten the one nine hundred twenty so you have this instrument that existed for eighty years really until until its inclusion in jazz really in the swing era that's when it with his first included actually kind of a late comer to jazz which is which is an interesting part of the story and then throughout the twentieth century and the one thousand centuries are such a richer amount of music for the saxophone and and so that's what we try to cultivate in our section on program we also try to really work with living composers we work with a composer who was located right here in princeton his name is jonathan russell he wrote a piece called supra and kind of did a new arrangement for a group  premiered at the eastman school of music and then he did a new arrangement for our group a couple of years ago so it's always exciting to work with a living composer he actually came in and met with the students you know a lot of times you're playing pieces by composers that have been long passed and so it's always exciting when you can work with someone new right and i recall last year i think there was a student who who didn't was in the original composer but didn't arrangement for you yeah so a couple of years ago this is this is one of the exciting things about about why c j is that so student centered and focused you know a couple years ago i had a student come up to me and he said i think i want to arrange something for the saxophone choir and i'm not very good at arranging myself i was really amazed when the student came up and mentioned us and so i said ok let's let's let's do it and so the student arranged a piece by eric whitacre which was called  sleep originally a choir piece that was arranged then for our saxophone ensemble and it was a huge success and so now at this point we've had three pieces that have been arranged by students the students arrange them i help them edit it we put the parts together and then the students and conducting the performance so this last year we had a student arrange a medley of harry potter songs from the movies so they originally composed by john williams and this student worked with an orchestral score and turned it into a to see if they get a whole piece and perform it themselves which is really exciting well well maybe they'll be some royalties in there someday hopefully so in addition to the choir you know we have the number of these other groups can kind of go program we have our what's called the sax ensemble in the saxophone choir so the ensemble usually a sixth through eighth grade students in the choir isn't one through twelfth grade we have the same thing for brass students so if you play trumpet  and so those are in addition to the three orchestras that we have and the wind symphonies so there really is something for everyone ok now if it's a parent or a student who's watching this show start to think well you know that would be neat to join y o c j can you tell us you know little bit about the process and how good of a player do you need to be sure you're many of the students who join j also also typically will audition for the region band program that's here in new jersey that eventually leads to the at the all state program so that's always a good indicator for me if you've tried out for region band in middle school or you've tried out for region been in high school and done well in those on visions that's usually a good indication that was huge a would be a good place for you in school if you typically tend to in your placement auditions for school if you tend to be at the top of your section then why c j really is is is the place for you it's it's a great way to you know take the skills and the fun that you have in school and be able to perform with people across the state of new jersey that are at the same level as you and it meets you maybe the meter maybe even go to a higher level yes exactly go for complicated music yes yeah many of the pieces that we perform just aren't really possible in a public school program because the time constraints of the public school program and also really the wide variety of students that you'll get why c j because it isn't isn't a program they have to audition to get into were able  to you know push the limit a little bit more on one what we can achieve with the students and that's an exciting thing ok now we do we do ask the students remain in their school program why is that important well you know what i always tell public school teachers i'm actually the recruitment coordinator in addition for was he j so i do a lot of visits to public schools in the area and what i always tell them is that we view ourselves as a partnership with the public schools we're not trying to supplant what they do in public school we want to we really want to add to that so we want students to come to our program become better players and go back into their program and be better players we want to enrich the experience that they have in the schools so our goal is not to t ake away what they do we want to support what they do in the public schools so we're really really excited about that partnership and i think it's been something that is been viewed very positively by the public school teachers in the area we have a lot of support from public school teachers they send students from from all over the place and some of our conductors are public school teachers as well and so we really view that as a strong core part of our program short well also as the siddons be privately taught why is that important well you know the music that we that we perform at y a c j most of it is at a college level i would say if you're if you're playing in one of the other groups or any playing music that's at a college level if you're in one of the lower groups you're playing in the playing music that's  a high school level so no matter where you are if it's kind of a step ahead of typically what you would be working on and we want we want to make sure that all students excel and succeed in the program and we found that having a private  teacher is is is the best way to do that it can be hard to even just prepare for the audition on your own without a private teacher so we want to see a private teacher when you come to audition and when you're part of the program sure  now you know some people might be watching may think that you know all the students who was c j are you know naturally talented that they all have aspirations to go to juilliard or purpose institute and that's i don't think that's really true i mean can you talk a little bit about you know what kind of students that we have you know what level you know and interest level did do you need to have obviously if you don't really care it's probably not for you but you know what how do you know what kind of at the end of the day two years two years down the line when a student has graduated what i remember really is that students personality and who they are i remember you know whether that person you know had kind of a funny personality or whether they were kind of a natural leader in the ensemble and that's that's what i always remember and i think for the students it's kind of the same thing you know for me those bonds in there those friendships is such an important part of the program and we get such a wide variety of students the students from from  private schools from public schools from specialized high schools like like biotech high school that's and in freehold we could students from different parts of the state that just have had different experiences and again you know we have some students that will go on and they'll though they'll study at conservatories and then we have students that go on to become engineers doctors you know math teachers really really everything and so for most of our students music is something that that they really enjoy and they want to excel in and they want to have a great time and that's when the you can do it was c j short now we practice every week at west windsor milly's borough high school north so i guess if somebody did want to join they have to be you know within driving distance sure that but you're right we draw from from quite a long long myriad tell tell me what you know if there's some stand out memories of your time it was c j you know what would you you know what would you like to cite well for me i've always enjoyed the times that we have locally performed here at richardson ator him which is right over at princeton university and i've always enjoyed that experience i can where you just going to remember for the rest of your life part of it was the setting the audience the way the students performed it just kind of all came together i also enjoy every couple of years we take an international tour and cereal you'll probably touch on this a little bit later but for me i think the the first international tour that we took to we took to austria and the czech republic i remember when we're in the czech republic in prague we went to a church called the the bethlehem chapel and this is a church that was built i believe it was in the fourteenth century and it's just a beautiful church and for this particular performance somehow i  convinced the host at the church to allow our saxophone group to actually perform up in the balcony so the audience was way down below and i was conducting from down below but the saxons were up in this balcony probably twenty five or thirty feet above me and and that was that was exciting to be able to you know have the music to have an echo yeah yeah yeah yeah just to be able to conduct in that kind of that kind of setting there are a lot of there are a lot of people figure many in berlin played there which was it was fantastic any particular where we are so running out of time but do any particular memories you have from this last summer sure you know i think one of the one of the most exciting things about going to another country like that is just being able to see these places that you've read about in history books and these places where these composers that wrote the music were playing these places where they had their music performed and that i think is if you have any questions please or please go to while org all of our events are listed there all the audition requirements are there you know lots of details about you know our concerts and our conductors in the different groups that we have can kind of show show you who who we are and what we've been for the last forty years it's amazing that it starts but in the long so please join us on december tenth that the college of new jersey  some really exciting instruments and to demonstrate for the students this is open to the public anybody can come and check it out and we encourage you to do so at eight o'clock eight o'clock all right and then january twenty first of course i cando hall will be in  college in new jersey will be our winter concert well thank you for joining us today we hope you found this informative interesting and we look forward to hopefully seeing you at a concert soon or perhaps