Young People's Symphony Orchestra Concerto Concert

Berkeley's Young People’s Symphony Orchestra (YPSO) 2012 Concerto Concert on February 11 and 12 will feature music director/conductor David Ramadanoff, three winners of the orchestra’s concerto competition, and 100 young orchestra musicians. The program will feature John Adams’ Lollapalooza, François-Adrien Boieldieu’s Harp Concerto in C Major, Madeline Olson, harp; Edvard Grieg’s Piano Concerto in A Minor, Michelle Zhang, piano; Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major, June Park, violin; and Samuel Barber’s Symphony No. 1.

Over the past 25 years, Pulitzer Prize winning composer and Berkeley resident John Adams’s music has played a decisive role in turning the tide of contemporary musical aesthetics away from academic modernism and toward a more expansive, expressive language, entirely characteristic of his New World surroundings. He wrote Lollapalooza in 1995 as a 40^th birthday present for his friend and collaborator, Simon Rattle, conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic. John Adams says of the piece: “The term "lollapalooza" suggests something large, outlandish, oversized, not unduly refined. H.L. Mencken suggests it may have originally meant a knockout punch in a boxing match. I was attracted to it because of its internal rhythm: da-da-da-DAAH-da. Hence, in my piece, the word is spelled out in the trombones and tubas, C-C-C-Eb-C (emphasis on the Eb) as a kind of ideé fixe. The "lollapalooza" motive is only one of a profusion of other motives, all appearing and evolving in a repetitive chain of events that moves this dancing behemoth along until it ends in a final shout by the horns and trombones and a terminal thwack on timpani and bass drum.” Listen to an excerpt of the piece here on Adams’s Web site: http://earbox.com/W-lollapalooza.html.

Each season, YPSO offers all members who have been in the orchestra for at least one full season the opportunity to enter the Concerto Competition to compete for the opportunity to play one movement of a concerto with the orchestra at a regular concert. The competition’s judges are Ramadanoff, YPSO Executive Director Wendy Howe, and Oakland School for the Arts music teacher, composer and conductor Omid Zoufonoun. This season’s concerto competition had 11 competitors.

Although his reputation is largely based upon his operas, French composer François-Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834) also composed other works, including his Harp Concerto in C Major, written in 1800-1801, which is one of the masterpieces of the harp repertory. Boieldieu became professor of composition at the Paris Conservatoire in 1817 and died in 1834.

Madeline Olson, age 16, who is home-schooled and lives in Ripon, Ca, is the principal harpist for YPSO. She began to study harp at age eight and currently studies with Linda Wood Rollo and Laura Porter. Madeline has enjoyed wide and varied harp performance experiences. In 2010, she won first prize in the Emerging Artist Division as well as the Fatrock Ink Special Prize at the Young Artist Harp Competition; and performed with the Gold Medal winning combined Napa Valley Youth Symphony/Modesto Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO) at the Los Angeles International Music Festival at Disney Hall. In 2011, Madeline won the MSYO Concerto Competition; placed third in her division of the LaVonne Schwager Competition; placed fifth in the American Harp Society National Competition; and performed at the 11th World Harp Congress Focus on Youth Program in Vancouver, Canada. Madeline was the guest artist on Golden Bough’s CD When Winter Comes. Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg (1843-1907) wrote the Piano Concerto in A Minor---one of his most enduring and popular works--- in 1868 when he was 24 years old. It blends Norwegian folk melodies, Grieg’s wonderful lyricism and virtuosic writing for the piano.

Michelle Zhang is a 15-year old sophomore at Alameda High School. This is her fourth year as an YPSO violinist. She has studied piano with Kent Tchii for 10 years and studied violin with Robin Revelli for 10 years, too. Michelle also played clarinet in the Lincoln Middle School Marching Band for three years in Alameda. She has participated in and won several Memorial Scholarship Foundation competitions at the Berkeley Piano Club and has won the Holy Names University Preparatory Music Department's Concerto Competition and played with Holy Names’ orchestra. She has attended the Certificate of Merit evaluations for the past five years and successfully completed Advanced Level. Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev began working on his ethereal Violin Concerto No. 1 in 1915, returned to it in 1917, but it didn’t get its premiere until 1923 in Paris, France.  

June Park, 17, is a senior at Piedmont High School. She is YPSO’s concertmaster and this is her fourth season with the orchestra. Falling in love with the violin at age six, she has continued her passion for eleven years and currently studies with Li Lin. During the past four summers, June participated in Youth Music International, an international music exchange program held interchangeably in Oxford, UK and San Francisco, U.S., in which she enjoyed playing both violin and viola. She has won numerous music competitions including the U.S. Open Music Competition, California State VOCE, Junior Bach, and Etude Club both as a soloist and as a part of chamber ensembles. When not practicing the violin, June enjoys competing in FIRST robotics, working in science labs, and taking photographs. She plans to major in Chemistry and minor in Music Performance in college.

American Composer Samuel Barber (1910-1981) wrote piano and choral music, operas, and won two Pulitzer Prizes for his music, but he’s best known for his Adagio for Strings, which is the second movement of his String Quartet, opus 11, arranged for string orchestra. His Symphony in One Movement (1936) is a condensed one-movement version of a classical four movement symphony and is modeled after Sibelius' Symphony No. 7.

Celebrating his 23rd season as Music Director/Conductor, David Ramadanoff conducts 100 YPSO musicians who range in age from 12 to 21 and hail from 28 Bay Area cities in six counties.

Founded in Berkeley in 1935, YPSO is the oldest youth orchestra in California and the second oldest in the nation. Violinist and conductor Jessica Marcelli founded YSPO at the suggestion of Clarabelle Bell, an amateur harpist and Berkeley resident, who got the idea after hearing a youth orchestra on a trip to Portland, Oregon.