GABRIEL MENESES: Four Elephants (2020)

Posted on October 28, 2021

Knowing that his new piece Four Elephants would be performed by young people, Gabriel Meneses wanted to write something that was fun to play but also technical and musically challenging. He has always liked elephants and everything related to them. He hadn’t seen one in-person since his childhood until he visited the Oregon Zoo in 2013. He still remembers staring at... Read More ›

REINALDO MOYA: Nimbostratus (2021)

Posted on October 28, 2021

In meteorology, a nimbostratus cloud is a multi-level, grey, often dark, amorphous, nearly uniform cloud that usually produces continuous rain, snow, or sleet but no lightning or thunder.

This short piece is a musical representation of these clouds. The music seems ominous at times, lithe in others and there is always a slight precipitation going on. One hears the coming-together of... Read More ›

TEXU KIM: Jump!! (2021)

Posted on October 28, 2021

Texu’s piece Jump!!, which PYP will perform on November 13, 2021, portrays the sheer joy of playing outside (which we have not been able to enjoy fully for the past 14 months!). The beginning of the piece sounds like someone saying “one, two, three … and jump!”  The piece develops in unpredictable ways, providing some fun for the audience with pizzicati (plucking... Read More ›

ALFONSO L. FUENTES COLÓN: Rapsodia Urbana (2021)

Posted on October 28, 2021

The inspiration behind Alfonso’s piece Rapsodia Urbana, which PYP will perform on November 13, 2021, was one of the many social events the composer experienced during María; a category 5 hurricane that in 2017 struck Puerto Rico, his home country. When Maestro David Hatter asked for a work as part of the Youth Orchestra Commissioning Initiative, the composer was thinking in a... Read More ›

NICOLE BUETTI: Restless Winds (2020)

Posted on October 28, 2021

Nicole Buetti felt that PYP’s Youth Orchestra Commissioning Initiative came into her life at the perfect time. Nicole was excited to get this opportunity to create a work that not only reflected what all of PYP’s young wind musicians were probably feeling but what the composer was going through as well. As a wind player, she was starting to feel restless... Read More ›

VAUGHAN WILLIAMS: Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis

Posted on October 20, 2021

The ravishingly-beautiful Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis, for double-string orchestra, was first performed at the famed Three Choirs Festival in 1910. This work is Vaughan Williams’ first major piece for a large ensemble and it created a huge sensation in Europe—and did much to put British music back on the map at the start of the 20th century. Although not the... Read More ›