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June 1 – Members of the Little Delaware Youth Ensemble have been practicing since March for this Sunday’s concert at the Foothills Performing Arts and Civic Center in Oneonta.
LYDE’s music director Uli Speth said he was “very” looking forward to this week’s performance. “This is the first time we’ve played Oneonta again since the pandemic began. We were going to celebrate our 20th anniversary in 2020, and then the pandemic happened.”
The LDYE has about 25 members from the Oneonta, Otego, Cooperstown and Delhi regions, and is divided into two groups, Speth said. The preparatory orchestra is made up of the young performers, while the older performers are part of the ensemble, he said. According to business manager Arlana Young, there are 10 students in the preparatory orchestra and 15 in the ensemble.
The students audition for the chamber orchestra, but “it’s not a scary audition,” Speth said. There is an audition scheduled each year, which will take place on June 13, but if people move to the area throughout the year, they can arrange an audition. Typically, students have been playing their string instruments for a year before joining the ensemble and they are between the ages of 6 and 18, he said.
The kids practice every Monday afternoon at Foothills, where the Sunday concert will be at 3 p.m., the website said.
According to the program for Sunday’s performance, the preparatory orchestra, conducted by Debra Devine, will perform four short selections by R. Schumann, F. Mendelssohn, FJ Haydn and WA Mozart, for a total of 15 minutes. The ensemble will perform longer pieces by Mozart, Farina, Tchaikovsky and McLean.
Student Sera Lentz, who is studying conducting, will conduct Mozart’s Allegro from Divertimento in F major, K 138, during the performance, the schedule said.
Speth said the concert, which is free and open to the public, is expected to last about an hour. It is Foothills policy that face masks must be worn in the building.
The ensemble performs three times a year, twice in winter in Delhi and Oneonta, and once in June in Oneonta, he said. This year’s winter concert was postponed from January to March due to the rise in omicron COVID-19 cases and was only held in Delhi, he said.
Although the concert was postponed, the practice was not. Speth said the ensemble was able to start training in September 2020. “We have protective measures in place — masks, distancing, temperature checks, asking questions,” he said. “It was great for the kids to get back together.”
One thing the ensemble has not yet been able to do is the workshop, led by prominent musicians from across the country, which it presents to LDYE students and students from local public schools, he said. . “We are making efforts to add one next year,” he said.
For more information, visit ldye.org
Vicky Klukkert, editor, can be reached at vklukkert@thedailystar.com or 607-441-7221. Follow her @DS_VickyK on Twitter.
