Best College Orchestra

musicprnt
Thu, 11 Feb 2016 19:08:27 +0000

NYO-USA might be a great program, but saying it is the best hands down cannot be backed up by anything objective. First of all, by its very charter, it keeps out students who are performance majors in college/conservatory, which limits its pool (quite deliberately). They get a lot of strong players in it, but its whole purpose is to give kids a chance who aren’t music majors. It also is very, very hard to compare it against either college programs, or programs like the New York Youth Symphony, Seattle Youth symphony and some of the others, they tend to attract high level music students, many of whom go on to performance careers.

I think it is a great program, but saying it is the best is very, very problematic, I think it is better to say it is one of many high level programs out there, and given that its focus is often a bit different than other youth orchestras, it really depends on the student and what they want out of it.