Festival Youth Orchestra + Kula

Aaron Kula conducts NEC's Festival Youth Orchestra in its 13th season.

These young musicians ages 13–18, who come from Asia, South America, and throughout the United States, participate in the only urban orchestra training program at a conservatory in the U.S. with 80 members and 16 faculty coaches.

The FYO will perform Duke Ellington's jazz symphony Black, Brown and Beige, a work that since its 1943 debut has been performed more often in excerpt than in its entirety. Wynton Marsalis, who has led performances of this work by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, has advised Aaron Kula in preparing this performance. Since one of the original performances by Duke Ellington and his orchestra of Black, Brown and Beigetook place in Boston's Symphony Hall, this can be seen as a homecoming for this music.

Dvorák Symphony No. 9

Ellington Black, Brown and Beige

Ravel Bolero

Aaron Kula is leading the Festival Youth Orchestra's 13th summer at NEC. As a conductor, Kula has previously worked with the Boston Ballet, Boston Sinfonietta, Chautauqua Youth Orchestra, Lake Erie Ballet, Miami City Ballet, Boston Conservatory Symphony, Santa Fe Symphony, New Hampshire Ballet, and with artists including cellist Yo-Yo Ma and clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. He currently is director of the Klezmer Company Orchestra.

Kula has also been teaching, arranging, and performing ethnic music for the past 30 years. He is Director of Music Collections and Performance at Florida Atlantic University Libraries in Boca Raton.