While athletes from across the world demonstrated their talent and ambition in Paris over the past two weeks, talented youth and young adults gathered across the ocean in New York to share and express their passion for music through Carnegie Hall's World Orchestra Week. The program, which ran from Aug. 1 to 7, showcased its own Weill Music Institute's National Youth Orchestra of the USA (NYO-USA) and NYO-2, along with the National Children's Symphony of Venezuela, Africa United Youth Orchestra, Beijing Youth Orchestra, European Union Youth Orchestra, and Afghan Youth Orchestra, with concerts throughout the week. The musicians also had the chance to spend time with each other, and on Monday, Aug. 5, the more than 700 musicians filled out an exhibition hall in the Jacob Javits Convention Center - more than 400 string players, 21 bassoons/contrabassoons, 26 trombones and rows of other winds, brass and percussion - running through musical scores with conductor Gustavo Dudamel.
A Tempo host Rachel Katz attended the play-in, as well as a panel discussion with some of the adults overseeing the various ensembles, and shares her conversations with some of the young musicians and panelists on her show this week. In addition to musicians from Venezuela, Portugal, France and the U.S., she also interviews Weill Music Institute Director Sarah Johnson; Bongali Tembe, Chief Executive and Artistic Director of the KZN Philharmonic Orchestra in South Africa; and Dr. Ahmad Sarmast, founder of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, which has been operating our of Portugal since the Taliban's return to power.
