“Musicians in the Alabama Symphony Youth Orchestra will get a taste of what it’s like to play like professionals on Sunday, March 2, when Roderick Cox conducts ‘Side By Side,’ a concert with their counterparts in the Alabama Symphony Orchestra,” writes Michael Huebner at Tuesday’s (2/18) AL.com. “The program will challenge the ASYO’s 12- to 22-year-olds with music by Wagner, Elgar, Mendelssohn, Brahms and Liszt, in most cases reading from the same stand as their older peers.… ‘On each desk of strings, you will have an ASO member and an ASYO member,’ said Cox, who is ASYO’s music director and principal conductor and ASO’s assistant conductor.… ‘Most of my players in ASYO study with the professionals from ASO. We talked about what each player needs, how they might benefit from playing piece versus that piece.… When I’m speaking to ASYO, versus speaking to ASO, I have to remind myself that ASO is not a youth orchestra.’ It involves getting the same result but with a different vocabulary.… Cox picked up a few pointers on the subject at the Aspen Music Festival last year, when he was a conducting fellow for the American Academy of Conducting, working with Atlanta Symphony Music Director Robert Spano and Larry Rachleff of Rice University.”
Posted February 20, 2014
