Young string players take to Walk Hall – JH News&Guide

While the Grand Teton Festival Orchestra has been rehearsing and performing in Walk Festival Hall for the past five weeks, another group of musicians has been tuning up for an end-of-the season concert there.

Since June 23, under the auspices of the nonprofit MusicLand, area teens in grades seven to 12 have been working on music old and new for violin, viola, cello and bass players. They will present the fruits of their summer labor — including an original composition the group collaborated on — at a free performance Tuesday in Walk Hall.

“This is our first time at Walk Hall,” MusicLand founder and Executive Director Michelle Quinn said. This is the fourth summer for the camp, but its culminating performances have always taken place at the Center for the Arts. “It was nice we got it figured out this year. The kids will feel really special,” performing in the hall professional musicians from around the world rave about.
Returning teachers are Quinn, longtime Teton County School District orchestra teacher Vince Gutwein and violinist Barbara Scowcroft, who in addition to long tenures with GTMF and the Utah Symphony has led the Utah Youth Orchestra and, in 2002, the World Youth Orchestra, which performed during the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

“Barb is such a powerhouse with youth orchestras and teaching,” Quinn said. “She teaches at a college level. I sometimes feel like I’m in a class.”

Scowcroft brought two “very challenging” works for this year’s program. The evening will start with an all-string arrangement of the first movement of Saint-Saëns’ Symphony No. 3 (1886), known as his “Organ” symphony, and the opening movement from Respighi’s first suite of “Ancient Dances and Airs” (1917).

“It’s complicated,” she said. “It’s a really great piece, with beautiful melodies, and really challenging.”

The second part of the program will feature works by Steven Laven, a GTMF cellist of 34 years and a member of the Rhode Island Philharmonic, the Boston Pops and several other New England ensembles. He also teaches cello and chamber music at Rhode Island College, and has been meeting with the young players weekly as well.

A string quartet made of GTMF musicians will perform his “Angry Water,” which he describes as “a musical depiction of a whitewater raft trip,” with “twists and turns.” Then, students and MusicLand faculty will sit with the GTMF players for Laven’s “Snake River Stomp,” which won the 2008 Texas Orchestra Director’s Association composition competition.Closing the concert will be a piece titled “RB Drum.”

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