LJYO in the News

April 20, 2009

Youth Orchestra’s 10th Annual ‘Sonic Bloom’ features surround-sound finale

      The 10th Annual Sonic Bloom concert will highlight not only the performance skills but also the composing and arranging talent of LJYO members and friends. The concert will also feature the performances of LJYO alumni re-joining the Orchestra for the concert’s closing selection.
      Sonic Bloom takes place on Sunday May 3 at 3 pm, at the Port Hope United Church.
      The concert marks a new level of achievement for the Port Hope-based Orchestra, whose last concert, in February 2009, was sold out.
      As LJYO music director and founder Michael Lyons recalls, “I have spent my entire life attempting to share music with others somehow or other – as a teacher, a performing musician, a broadcaster of music, and indeed, as a music educator. In the summer of 1999, I was looking for an elevated musical experience for my own two sons, and that is when LJYO was conceived.”
      Ten years later, the Orchestra is still turning young people on to symphonic performances, still amazing audiences with the level of performance – and many alumni are returning to join in a very special Sonic Bloom.
      Violinist Jeremy Foster has readied the first movement of his Overture in D Minor for this concert, Port Hope resident Tony Prower has arranged a medley of Burt Bacharach tunes, and woodwind coach David Tanner has arranged a jazz classic as the concert’s grand finale.
      Foster, a grade 12 student at Port Perry High School, began writing his Overture in music class last fall. By Christmas, he had finished the course requirements, but he decided to arrange the opening movement specifically for the current configuration of LJYO.
      “I was stretched, technologically and musically,” he says, “and there were times when I was sort of fed up with it. But I got a lot of help from David Tanner, and I’m really glad I took this on.”
      The definition of “youth” must be extended only slightly to apply to Tony Prower, and his latest project also has a connection to his student days. Sixty years ago, Tony got to know Burt Bacharach in the music programme at McGill University.
      After Tony’s recent performance of a medley of Bacharach songs on piano, Michael Lyons asked him to orchestrate the pieces. The result is a medley of instantly recognizable tunes including “Do You Know the Way to San José?”, “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head”, and “What the World Needs Now is Love”.
      Arranging for orchestra was not a new experience for Tony, who taught music for many years at Trinity College School and composed the very first piece performed by La Jeunesse Youth Orchestra, in 1999. Nevertheless, he found some new challenges in this project.
      “I got ‘Sibelius’, a computer program now used by many composers and arrangers. The program has a large learning curve, but it gave me something to do to get me through the winter – and a challenge like this keeps the mind in shape.”
      David Tanner’s gifts as a composer and arranger are also well known to LJYO audiences – his “Tango of the Lemons” has been a crowd-pleaser at two recent concerts. His arrangement of Chuck Mangione’s “Bellavia” will be the grand finale of the 10th Annual Sonic Bloom.
      David Tanner says that the first half of his arrangement “is a very faithful recreation from the original. The second half changes a bit more, incorporating a jazz solo and making use of the different resources of the orchestra. This piece provides LJYO members with some new, challenging rhythms, particularly Latin jazz rhythms.”
      Alumni will join in, not only on traditional orchestral instruments but also on electric piano and electric bass, and will be stationed throughout the church to make the finale a true surround-sound experience.
      Lyons says that “graduates of LJYO are spread across the country and work in a wide variety of disciplines. They have all experienced the good that comes from constantly raising the bar of expectation for themselves and others. The LJYO experience has provided all of us with a sense of purpose and accomplishment. I can say with absolute certainty that I am looking forward to the next ten years.”
      Tickets for Sonic Bloom are available online at www.ljyo.ca by phone at 1-866-460-5596, and at the box offices of the Capitol Theatre and Victoria Hall.