New York String Orchestra: Green Shoots Nominee

Music teaching in much of the United States consists of the following:

Mom-n-Dad, with a child eager to learn music(sometimes, sometimes not), engage a teacher with a good local reputation. Teacher teaches Junior some technique, and begins putting him/her through his Rota of favored pieces. That Rota ensures that both Teacher and Junior look good for Mom-n-Dad, who happily write checks. That Rota tends to omit any and all material that might expose weaknesses in Junior's technique and Teacher's grasp of musical styles.

Usually, Junior graduates from high school, heads to University and other interests, and can call up bits of pieces from the rota in the future. Junior marries, has children, and the process begins again.

Sometimes, Junior thinks that music will be a great profession. Junior enters a good conservatory/university music school, and is confronted by a Professor who sez: 'Let's hear a D harmonic minor scale, two octaves, please', and Junior sez: 'What's that?'. The Theory Graduate Assistant sez, 'Please write an A-major scale in both treble and bass clefs, and Junior sez: 'What's that?'.  The Orchestra Professor places a middle Haydn symphony on Junior's stand, and Junior sez: 'Who's that?'.

Two years of pain and torment follow, and Junior either survives the Trial By Fire (because Teacher's rota turns out to have been a house of cards), or heads off to pre-med or business, or worse, the Music Education major. On that track, Junior may well end up as a Teacher with a Rota...

If Junior joins the local Youth Orchestra, he/she is run through a standard Rota of about a dozen nineteenth-century Russian pieces, which sound impressive, and neglect such inconveniences as learning how to perform Bach, Mozart, or even get familiar with Beethoven and Bartok. That comes later, in the Trial By Fire, the reasoning goes. The immediate idea is to keep Mom-n-Dad writing checks, and everyone feeling good about themselves.

One effort, quietly underway since the late 1960's, runs counter to that grim march over the cultural cliff, The New York String Orchestra.

The New York Times reviewed its Christmas Eve concert, and the news is heartening. They were performing Mozart and Mendellssohn, not Rimsky-Korsakov and Shostakovich 5.


Green Shoots nominee. A donation link is found at the first link above.

If only we had about twenty such efforts in a nation of 380,000,000 people...