Getting in on the Ground Floor with the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras
Stephen Rogers Radcliffe, in his sixth year as music director of the Seattle Youth Symphony Orchestras (four of them, plus chamber groups, serving 470 kids this season), is pursuing a vision that doesn’t end at concert hall doors.
Passionate about education and outreach experience for his young musicians, he has over the past few years been developing partnerships with local arts organizations which result in his musicians performing with them.
Among the groups which have opened their arms to SYSO are Pacific Northwest Ballet, Seattle Theatre Group, Seattle Chamber Music Society, the 5th Avenue Theatre and Seattle Opera.
Next week, Sunday, May 20, as the last performance of its regular three-concert season, SYSO’s senior orchestra, Seattle Youth Symphony, performs a major choral work for the first time, Verdi’s Requiem, with the Tacoma Symphony Chorus and the UW Chamber Singers trained by Geoffrey Boers, plus soloists Marcy Stonikas, soprano; Margaret Gawrysiak, mezzo soprano; Jason Slayden, tenor; and Charles Robert Austin, bass-baritone.
Stonikas, Gawrysiak, and Slayden are all past or present members of Seattle Opera Young Artists Program. (Slayden, coming to a rehearsal earlier this year, says he was “blown away” by the caliber of the orchestra, according to Radcliffe.) Austin, who regularly sings with major orchestras and opera companies including the Metropolitan Opera, happens to be in town anyway for performances of Bluebeard’s Castle with the Seattle Symphony.
It should be a terrific performance. Every work played by SYSO is a premiere for the musicians, and the excitement and freshness combined with the musicians’ undeniable talent makes for wonderful performances.
The Verdi follows on two performances of Oklahoma at the 5th Avenue Theatre in February with an entirely student cast and tech staff, and members of SYSO in the pit.
Next month, for the third year running, SYSO will be the pit orchestra June 16 at McCaw Hall for Pacific Northwest Ballet’s school performances, and for Next Step, PNB’s presentation of choreography by six of its own dancers.
“These community partnerships are among my proudest achievements,” says Radcliffe. “Most important, they enhance the curriculum we offer our students. The professional musical world often has gainful employment in opera, ballet, theater pits.”
“Giving our kids this opportunity also gives them a sneak peek at the way musicals or ballet are produced, and what the challenges are. The cool thing is our kids are 17 to 19 years old, and they’ve been practicing their scales, et cetera, for hours at a time on their own. Unbeknownst to them are all these dancers of the same age spending equal numbers of hours practicing their art. Put the two together and it bridges the gap between stage and pit.”
Peter Boal, artistic director of Pacific Northwest ballet is equally passionate about education and encouraging his in-house budding choreographers, and, says Radcliffe, has bent over backwards to meet SYSO half way. Before the June performances, Radcliffe takes his musicians to watch a ballet rehearsal, and the student dancers go to a pit rehearsal, sitting on the edge of the stage, their legs dangling, after which both groups have question and answer sessions.
“It‘s exciting when we have these peer-to-peer events, “says Radcliffe. “Peter and I prompt them a little. For instance: What do musicians think about a leap or dancers about a crescendo?”
Each year, he says, Boal has encouraged the SYSO musicians to do more, and this time three of the young choreographers are taking advantage of being able to use a live orchestra for their works.
For next season, Seattle Opera has commissioned three one-act operas for their Education in the Schools program. The composer is Eric Banks, perhaps better known as the founding director of the contemporary choral group The Esoterics. All three operas will be to do with the environment: the ocean, the forests, fresh and salt water, and endangered species, tying in with science and ecology programs in the schools as well as their arts programs. While the performances in the schools themselves won’t use SYSO musicians, there will be many occasions next season where Seattle Opera is presenting these at events in partnership with conservation organizations, and here, they will use SYSO.
According to Jonathan Dean, Seattle Opera’s director of public programs and media, the idea is to pick up from the Opera’s “green” Ring, and branch out to work with environmental organizations.
To rehearse for these gigs, the young musicians have to fit extra rehearsals into their already extremely busy high school curricula but “more wanted to participate than there is room in the pit,” says Radcliffe, “but it’s my goal to make sure all 120 of my kids have an opportunity to be involved in one or another production.”
To add these kinds of educational experiences for the musicians takes money. The ballet performances in June adds another five to six weeks to SYSO’s season, plus rehearsal space, coaches and so on. “It’s always a question of which comes first, the cart or the horse, and raising funds for something on paper is almost impossible. Demonstrated success works better,” says Radcliffe, who does have some funding from Arts Fund. The 5th Avenue offered a contribution to SYSO’s Scholarship Fund, and PNB supports as much as it can.
Radcliffe’s eclectic conducting background includes opera, musical theater and ballet as well as choral and orchestra, which gives him solid understanding of all the genres to which he is trying to expose his kids.
“I don’t think any other youth orchestra in the country is doing this sort of thing,” he says.
