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The Youth Orchestras of San Antonio (YOSA) is presenting a concert on Sunday evening, November 1, at the Tobin. Troy Peters is YOSA’s Music Director and dives into the program.
“YOSA is going to be presenting a concert called Cinema Classics. We're really excited about this program of music that was written for movies,” Peters said. “So we're going to be doing music by John Williams from Star Wars: The Force Awakens. We're doing music by Vaughn Williams from a World War II movie. it's got this really beautiful, sweeping World War II score.”
Peters guides YOSA teens to attain competence, and eventually, expertise on their instrument. And concerts like Sunday’s is one of the learning experiences that YOSA kids can take with them into adulthood.
“Mussorgsky’s Night on Bald Mountain is in the Disney movie Fantasia. And then Howard Hansen Symphony Number two, this beautiful piece of American music that was actually used for the big final sequence in the movie Alien,” he said.
Each YOSA concert is arranged to augment and enhance the process of learning their instrument. And playing from the Tobin Center stage teaches the young musicians something that practice never will.
Peters talks about the origins of Sunday’s concert.
“This year, I did a special project at the beginning of the season where I asked some of my fellow musicians, what are the pieces you played when you were a teenager, that changed your life the most?” he said.
The responses he got pointed him towards film scores that elevated the movies that most of us saw.
Film scores, of course, don’t tend to be for beginners, but the musicians of YOSA’s Philharmonic are the most experienced and accomplished musicians.
“So these kids are dedicated. They are fired up, and they spend time learning this music. They're out on TikTok like everybody else, but they're also on Spotify and Apple music, listening to Tchaikovsky and listening to Shostakovich,” Peters said.
The learning process has taught the young musicians that the music they’re playing is difficult but also rewarding.
“They have fallen in love with these pieces. They are the kinds of pieces that are just so much fun to play. And so this, this angle of specifically trying to pick things that I know adult musicians look back on fondly, has worked really well as a way to give our teenage musicians the chance to do something that they're going to be blown away by. It's been a lot of fun.
Disclosure: YOSA is a sponsor of Texas Public Radio. We cover them as we would any other business, institution or organization.
