Centenary Youth Orchestra plans February 13 concert featuring Concerto Competition winners
SHREVEPORT, LA — The Centenary Youth Orchestra (CYO) will perform a winter concert on Monday, February 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Anderson Auditorium at Centenary’s Hurley School of Music. The program of Mozart, Bach, and Bruch is the first of two concerts featuring CYO Concerto Competition winners. The concert is free and open to the public and will be livestreamed at facebook.com/centenaryyouthorchestra.
“The concert opens with Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's Overture to the opera The Marriage of Figaro,” said Dan Santelices, CYO director. "This is an especially well-known piece that is a challenge technically to the entire orchestra. The audience will love the energy of the tempo and quick changes in dynamic contrast.”
CYO Concerto Competition winners Ivy and Caleb Joseph will be performing the Andante con moto, first movement, from Max Bruch’s Concerto for Violin & Viola, Op. 88. Both musicians attend Caddo Magnet High School and began their studies in the Centenary Suzuki program at three and four years old, respectively. Ivy, a violinist, is a pupil of Laura Crawford and Caleb, who plays viola, studies with Adrienne Gabriel. Both were selected to be members of the Louisiana All-State Orchestra, where Caleb was appointed Principal Violist this past November 2022.
"It is the first time that the competition has selected a duo and is remarkable because both musicians needed to be equally adept musically and technically,” explained Santelices. “The piece truly is written in a way that allows both players to shine as soloists as well as complement each other."
Dominick Benedetto, a junior at Centenary majoring in music composition, was last seen as a soloist in November 2022, premiering his violin concerto. At the CYO Concerto Competition, Benedetto won the opportunity to perform the Introduction and first movement of Max Bruch's Scottish Fantasy for Violin, Harp and Orchestra. The Scottish Fantasy especially illustrates the sound of forlorn Scotland through the violin, representing a genre that Santelices believes shows off Benedetto’s versatility as a musician.
The concert closes with J.S Bach's Orchestra Suite No. 3. According to Santelices, “It is a grand multi movement work which features strings, winds, trumpet, and timpani performing courtly dance movements which would have suited the royalty who would have enjoyed hearing them. The most well-known music comes from the sublime 2nd movement, Air, also known as Air for the G-string.
The CYO provides college-level playing experiences for advanced instrumentalists ages 13 and above. CYO members perform repertoire for strings, woodwinds, and brass in both chamber and large-scale orchestral settings. The CYO founded its Concerto Competition in 2019 to further encourage CYO members in their pursuit of excellence in the field of music.
The CYO will conclude its 2022-2023 season with a concert on Tuesday, April 11, at 7:30 p.m. This concert will feature the remaining CYO Concerto Competition winners, Cal Alexander and Corey Bowe.
For more information about the CYO, visit centenary.edu/cyo.