In Monday’s (9/21) Buffalo News, Mary Kunz Goldman writes, “Joey Young was in grade school in South Carolina when someone handed him a trumpet and told him to play. … At 15, he attended a conducting workshop. ‘I conducted the second movement of Beethoven’s Second,’ he recalls. ‘I fell in love with the sound of the orchestra.’ One thing led to another and now, Young is here for a year as an apprentice conductor with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. He is here courtesy of a prestigious fellowship through the League of American Orchestras. … The fellowship catches Young at a watershed time in his career. At 27, he holds an artist’s diploma in conducting from the Peabody Conservatory and a bachelor’s degree in music, with an emphasis on music education, from the University of South Carolina. But he is still green enough to get stars in his eyes recalling how, when he was 17, he bought his first orchestral score. … He jokes about his highbrow musical tastes. ‘I go to the gym and everyone would probably think I was listening to Top 40. But I’m listening to Debussy.’ Behind the humor, though, is a serious commitment to his art. Young spent the last two years in Baltimore, working with Marin Alsop, the music director of the Baltimore Symphony.”
Posted September 22, 2009
