Ask 13-year-old Alexander Lynn to name one of his favorite pieces of music these days and he won't name a song by My Morning Jacket, the Black Eyed Peas or the latest "American Idol" sensation. He'll cite "Bacchanal," from the opera "Samson and Delilah" by Camille Saint-Saens. Yep, that early 20th-century classical composer dude.
It was only two years ago that Alexander ... ahem, politely rebuffed the cello played by his friend Caleb Reedy.
"Caleb said, 'You gotta try this, man!'" Alexander recalls today. "I said, 'Not over my dead body!'"
But then Alexander's mother forced him to tag along when his younger sister, Michelle, decided to take up violin under the tutelage of the Flagler Youth Orchestra's strings program.
"I came out of that and said, 'Mom, can I please learn cello?'" Alexander says in their rural Flagler County home. "That was so much fun!"
And so last spring, when the youth orchestra performed the final of its three annual concerts, Alexander was playing his cello on "Bacchanal" as well a work by Bach. (It was Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" that was the outre item on the program.)
Alexander and 9-year-old Michelle, the children of Greg and Laura Lynn, are both entering their third year with the strings program. They will be joined by between 250 and 300 students as the Flagler Youth Orchestra and the strings program celebrate their fifth season since becoming a free program under the Flagler County School District.
An orientation session for new students will be at 5 p.m. Sept. 9 in the cafeteria of Indian Trails Middle School in Palm Coast.
Jonathan May, a cellist and Winter Park resident, is the music director of the Flagler Youth Orchestra (one of three such groups he heads in Central Florida).
"The pieces that work typically are the standard (classical) repertoire." says May, who's worked 30 years with young musicians. "The piece from 'Samson and Delilah' is this fantastic, colorful orchestration. It was a real stretch. I told the kids, 'If, three weeks before the concert, we're not ready for this, we have to realistic. I don't want to put you guys out there if it's not going to sound good.'
"They just buckled down. They worked and worked. It was a really good performance, by any standard. I was proud of them. I was in tears by the time it was over. I knew how far they had come in such a short time."
Likewise the strings program.
The roots of the program go back to 2003, when it was a fee-based youth outreach program of the Flagler Symphonic Society. But the program faced funding shortages in 2005.
Leave a comment