Youth Orchestras of San Antonio is hoping to take listeners on an adventure this weekend. And the nature of the music that YOSA's Troy Peters has selected ensures it will be quite theatrical.
"This Sunday YOSA's going to be presenting a concert at the Tobin Center that we're calling ‘Star Wars and Other Epic Adventures.’
“I knew with the 40th Anniversary of ‘Star Wars’ that it would be fun for us to explore this great music,” he said. “It's exciting for an orchestra; it's exciting for an audience."
Peters says Star Wars is one of those cultural institutions that crossed ethnic and economic divisions, and it has, in turn, brought us all together.
"Even if people aren't huge ‘Star Wars’ fans, this music still tends to make people smile and feel nostalgic and comfortable,” he said. “In the last 40 years, it's become a central river in the flow of our pop culture."
While the other selections weren't written for movies, he says they still, by their very nature, contain a lot of adventure.
"So we turned to music by Alexander Borodin, the ‘Polovtsian Dances,’ which are colorful and exciting," he said.
From Russia, they then travel south of the border, into Mexico.
“We're doing a Mexican piece by Carlos Chavez called Sinfonia India, which is an imagined picture of ancient Mexico.”
Peters also plans something almost theatrical in scope.
"We're also introducing a World Premiere. We have a piece by a San Antonio native named Nicco Athens,” he said. “Nico grew up here, played in YOSA as a kid, went off to Julliard, went off to grad school.”
Athens continued a musical pathway as a music teacher in Shanghai, China, and now he's written a new orchestral piece called ‘Out of the Forest Primeval. Peters said this concert will be a worldwide debut.
You can catch these YOSA performances Sunday evening at 7 at the Tobin Center.
Find more on YOSA here.
