Flagler Youth Orchestra Performs Strings Around the World Concert at Auditorium Monday

In its 10th year anniversary’s  second concert featuring the entirety of its musician corps–five ensembles, upwards of 325 students–the Flagler Youth Orchestra Monday  presents “Strings Around the World,” an evening of music featuring compositions from five continents and a dozen cultures.

The concert takes place at the Flagler Auditorium at 7:00 p.m. Tickets are $6, with the sixth dollar directed to the auditorium’s Arts in Education fund. Tickets for children 17 and under are just $1.

It is the second mid-year concert intently devoted to music from around the world, a concept developed by Artistic Director Sue Cryan, who will be directing two of the evenings five ensembles, including the most advanced orchestra, the Harmony Chamber Orchestra. That orchestra and especially its smaller string quartet perform in 12 to 15 times during the year at smaller venues. The Harmony Chamber Orchestra was last in performance at the Palm Coast United Methodist Church’s annual concert series in January. (Hear them play the Beatles’s “Eleanor Rigby” in the audio clip below.)

Monday evening the concert will also feature the faculty quartet, with Jeremy Bartlett, a student, at the bass, in a performance of Isaac Albeniz’s Tango in D. The quartet includes Cryan, Maggie Snively, Joe Corporon and El Gervasio.

The concert’s five ensembles progress from the earliest skill level, featuring students who picked up their string instruments just this fall, to the most advanced. Snively’s relative beginners will play an Australian folk tune, a French Lullaby and a Ghanian folk tune, followed by Gervasio’s group playing a German, a Hebrew traditional and an American tune. Two more ensembles and the faculty quartet will play before the evening culminates with the Harmony Chamber Orchestra and performances of Grieg’s Norwegian Dance No. 2 and one of Granados’s Spanish Dances, among other pieces.

The Flagler Youth Orchestra, a project of the Flagler County School Board and Friends of the Youth Orchestra–the FYO’s fund-raising arm–numbers a cross-section of public, private and homeschooled students. The FYO’s mission is to provide free music education after school to all Flagler children with a desire to play an instrument. The program’s twice-weekly rehearsals are held at Indian Trails Middle School. The district underwrites the cost of a majority of the staff, with the Friends of the Youth Orchestra picking up the cost of about 20 percent of the program, all the orchestra’s music costs, and the entirety of its scholarships.

Almost a third of the orchestra’s students are on instrument scholarships, with violins, violas, cellos and the occasional bass provided for them at no cost to the students.

For more information on the concert, how you can show your support of this performing arts program or enrollment in the strings program, contact Cheryl Tristam, program director, at (386) 503-3808 or by email here. .