by Peter Jacobi
Herald-Times Reviewer
April 3, 2007

Well, now, it was less than a week ago that, in a concert review, I urged the IU Auditorium management to reconsider its policy of admitting people long after the start of a performance because the practice of it caused potential disruption for the faithful folks who got there on time. Let latecomers wait outside until a break was my thought.

So, on Sunday evening, what happens? Not remembering that the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra concert was scheduled to begin at 7 rather than the usual 8, I got to the Auditorium at 7:20 in the belief I was arriving, as I normally do, nice and early.

Not so, of course. Angry with myself and grateful that no one stopped me, I slithered ignominiously into the theater during the second movement of the Khachaturian Violin Concerto. All I can say is, I still believe in a policy change, and I’m sorry to have missed the start of soloist Vadim Gluzman’s performance with MAYO because what I heard thereafter was so satisfying.

Gluzman is a major artist who, by chance and a request from MAYO’s music director, Thomas Loewenheim, agreed not only to play with the orchestra but participate in the preparatory international youth orchestra festival that preceded the concert. What an experience it must have been for these young musicians, quite a few not yet in high school, to collaborate with such an outstanding violinist. He produced a gloriously sweet sound in the second movement of the concerto, the Andante sostenuto, and added pinpoint accuracy as he tumbled nimbly through the intricacies of the concluding Allegro vivace.

The orchestra, renamed iMAYO for the occasion (the “I” for “international”), consisted of MAYO’s usual contingent of 60 musicians, plus members of the IU String Academy, visitors from Israel and Hong Kong and coaches. The amazing Loewenheim had this merged ensemble playing awfully well, not merely in sync with Gluzman but in interpretative accord.

A reading of Schumann’s Symphony Number 3, “Rhenish,” his celebration of the Rhine and Rhineland, also proved praiseworthy. Though a bit rough around the edges, as might be expected from an aggregation so young and quickly put together, it exuded buoyancy and appropriate feelings of joy.

Such a gem this Musical Arts Youth Orchestra is, giving budding musicians in the region a great opportunity to practice and perform outside the school environment under the guidance of a conductor who seems to know just how to get the most into and out of them.

Gluzman, between the Khachaturian and the Schumann, called IU double bassist Bruce Bransby and violinist Meidad Yehudayan, affiliated with the Hong Kong International School Orchestra, to the stage so that they might regale the audience with an encore: a P.D.Q. Bach sort of send-up of a J.S. Bach concerto that had the audience laughing. Fun.

© 1997 - 2007 Hoosiertimes Inc.

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International students gather for iMAYO concert
By Andy Graham 331-4346  agraham@heraldt.com
Herald-Times
April 1, 2007


The second-annual iMAYO festival concert, featuring the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra, guest soloist Vadim Gluzman and guest musicians from the Hong Kong International School, the String Academy of Indiana University, Israel's Keshet Eilon Music Center and France's Conservatoire de Musique de Paris.
 

MAYO orchestra conductor Thomas Loewenheim talks to students during a break at at rehearsal.  Monty Howell-Hoosiertimes

The friendship Thomas Loewenheim and Meidad Yehudayan cultivated while growing up in Jerusalem had a couple of facets to which many Bloomingtonians can readily relate: Music and basketball.

Loewenheim's nickname for Yehudayan was, and still is, "Magic" - a reference to American basketball icon Earvin "Magic" Johnson.

"He's amazing," Loewenheim said Thursday evening, gesturing toward Yehudayan. "He's got moves."

The movements both old friends were primarily concerned with Thursday were those of the Schumann Third Symphony. And they were helping concoct a different sort of magic.

They will, in just three rehearsals, blend students from all over the world, representing four separate ensembles, to present a free concert at 7 tonight in the Indiana University Auditorium featuring guest soloist Vadim Gluzman. The concert culminates the second-annual iMAYO, the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra's international festival.

Loewenheim is musical director for the Bloomington-based MAYO, which serves 75 musicians aged 8-18 from 11 counties in south central Indiana.

The MAYO is augmented for tonight's show by 11 musicians from Yehudayan's Hong Kong International School program, several more from Mimi Zweig's Indiana University String Academy, two from the Keshet Eilon Music Center in Israel and Jean-Baptiste Doulcet, a French pianist recently accepted at the Conservatoire de Paris.

The musicians practiced the material in their home countries before uniting in Bloomington this week.

"A bit of magic helps it all come together, but also a lot of hard work," Loewenheim said Friday afternoon. "You're adding new people to the group, but the core group knows the work well, and all the kids from the String Academy, Israel. Hong Kong and France are all great players."

MAYO violinist and Tri-North Middle School student Mailyn Fidler relishes adding the guest musicians to the mix. "It sounds so much bigger now, and it's definitely a case of bigger being better," she said in reference to the grand, sweeping nature of the Schumann work.

Fellow MAYO player Matt Serfling added: "It's good to meet people of different nationalities, to experience different cultures, and it just all adds to the whole."

James Wong from Hong Kong has stayed with Serfling's family each of the past two years while participating in the iMAYO festival. Wong noted Bloomington's smaller size, fresh air and relative quiet compared to Hong Kong. "I think it would be good for studying here," he said.

The Hong Kong visitors got to study with legendary cellist Janos Starker while sitting in on an IU master class during their visit last year.

This year, they'll get to play with Gluzman, a Ukraine native who plays the ex-Leopold Auer Stradivarius, who will solo during the Khachaturian violin concerto section of tonight's program.

"Vadim Gluzman is one of the top players, one of the biggest talents, in the world today," Loewenheim said. "He's played on all the major stages and with the major orchestras.

"He also is one of the nicest people I've ever met. He's donating his time, and his fee is donated to the scholarships that help the Israeli musicians make the trip here. He shares our vision of passing the music along through the next generation."

MAYO emerged to help further that goal in 2002 out of an older organization called the Southern Indiana Youth Symphony, which in turn began in the 1960s as the Bloomington Youth Symphony. It raises its own funds, offers additional experiences in chamber music and jazz combos and is intended to complement rather than compete with school orchestral programs.

Matt Serfling rehearses in the MAYO orchestra. Monty Howell-Hoosiertimes

© 1997 - 2007 Hoosiertimes Inc.

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Review of the December MAYO Concert

by Peter Jacobi
Herald-Times Reviewer
December 11, 2006

...at Bloomington North, the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra, under its music director Thomas Loewenheim, admirably performed music inspired by Shakespeare. The first half of the program belonged totally to the kids, of high school age and younger, as they tackled two substantial assignments: the Concert Overture “Hamlet,” written by the 19th-century Danish composer Niels Gade in honor of a countryman known for his portrayal of Shakespeare’s conflicted Prince of Denmark, and Tchaikovsky’s well known Fantasy Overture, “Romeo and Juliet.” Loewenheim had the stage-filling ensemble playing with high dosages of assurance.

If anything, MAYO did even better after the break, collaborating in excerpts from a pair of Shakespearean operas by Verdi, “Otello” and “Falstaff.” Here, the orchestra shared the spotlight with world-acclaimed baritone and IU faculty member Tim Noble and members from his studio. From “Otello,” Noble contributed an intense performance of Iago’s “Credo,” that villain’s compressed manifesto of malice, and soprano Elizabeth Baldwin sang with passion Desdemona’s prayer for life, an “Ave Maria.”

From “Falstaff,” Noble and fellow baritone Jason Plourde added the extended, plot-propelling Falstaff/Ford scene, which they delivered with vigor and comic touches, and which might have scored even more had lights been up in the theater to allow the audience to follow the libretto printed in the program. Noble and nine of his students came on for “Everything in the world’s a jest,” the clever fugue that Verdi devised to end the opera.

by Peter Jacobi
Herald-Times Reviewer
April 25, 2006

...Then, at the IU Auditorium, MAYO wound up an international youth orchestra festival with a gala concert that featured a stage-filling combine of more than 120 musicians: those in MAYO itself, along with talents from the IU String Academy, Israel, Hong Kong and France.

MAYO's excellent music director, Thomas Loewenheim, remarkably brought them together as a surprisingly well-knit unit for vigorous readings of the Shostakovich "Festive Overture" and a stirring "Fanfare for Israel" by Paul Ben-Haim.  Loewenheim and company also successfully premiered a pleasing, part pensive, part propulsive Preludes for Orchestra by IU composer Don Freund.  A post intermission performance of Brahms' Second Symphony sounded well organized and convincingly Brahmsian, quite a feat considering that rehearsal time was limited to the one-week duration of the festival.

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Hold the MAYO ... in high regard
Music Review: Musical Youth Arts Orchestra

by Peter Jacobi
Herald-Times Reviewer
November 23, 2005

It had been close to two years since this reviewer last heard the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra, often affectionately and conveniently referred to as MAYO. He heard it again Sunday evening in concert at the Buskirk-Chumley Theater.

During the intervening months, this valuable ensemble, currently led by Thomas Loewenheim, has made significant progress technically and artistically. Sunday's concert, filled with major challenges for an orchestra holding members reportedly as young as 9, was played with confidence and surprisingly high doses of competence. Loewenheim, a doctoral candidate at IU's School of Music, seems to be a comfortable fit for these young people. What one heard suggested they respond well to his leadership.

In both the program's opening work, the Overture "Echoes of Ossian" by the Danish composer Niels Wilhelm Gade, and the closer, Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, Loewenheim drew some truly fine moments from the orchestra, particularly the strings and woodwinds.

The golden-toned violist Yuval Gotlibovitch, at present the youngest member of IU's music faculty, joined MAYO for performances of Max Bruch's Romance for Viola and Orchestra and Carl Maria von Weber's Andante and Rondo Ungarese for that same combination. He produced honeyed bel canto sound and, where called for, absolutely controlled and yet also extravagant musical gymnastics.

The wish expressed in this writer's previous review, that MAYO might attract more young people to its concerts, remains so. There were all too few youngsters in the theater listening to their talented peers. A repeated suggestion is that in return for the privilege of playing a part in this treasure of an opportunity, the orchestra's members should be asked to bring a couple of friends to performances. That would fill the theater and, perhaps, help build tomorrow's audience for classical music.

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In Harmony
Guest conductor directs students toward excellence
By Jeff Hauersperger, Times-Mail Staff Writer
November, 2005


Bedford ─ With a simple wave of his baton, Thomas Loewenheim moves the music in a different direction.  It takes on a different tone, a different quality.

The musicians at Guy Rumsey's class at Bedford North Lawrence High School this particular morning are focused on what they're playing.  They don't want to disappoint Loewenheim.  After all, they seldom get to perform for a guest conductor.

Loewenheim is the music director of the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra (MAYO) in Bloomington.  It's a group comprised of student musicians from 11 southern Indiana counties, including Lawrence.

He's been visiting BNL string classes, in part, to prepare students for upcoming shows with the MAYO.  Four BNL students are regular members of the group; several others have been invited to perform on Friday and Sunday as guests.

One of the regular members in Andy Ritter, who has been playing the cello for 12 years.  "He makes me be more of a leader here," the BNL junior said about Loewenheim's visit.  "I try to help others to do better in this orchestra."

Loewenheim said it was nice to see familiar faces, such as Ritter's.  "You get to teach them, and they get to go back to school and help their friends, and Andy is one of those kinds of people," the conductor said.

Brianna Fluharty, a senior bas player, is also someone Loewenheim knew.  She's taken master classes from him at Indiana University.  She said it was important for her to be exposed to different conductors.  "It will make it easier to adjust to different conductors when I go away to college if I get a variety now," she said.

Rumsey agreed that was a key reason to have Loewenheim visit his class.  "Working with another conductor is good for them," he said.  "Those who are more experienced need to be streched and the others need to be brought up to a higher level."

Ritter said there is a difference between the way Rumsey and Loewenheim conduct, but knowing the music makes it easer for him to adjust.  "Since I know the music, now I can pretty much play under either one," he said.

Then is it more about the music or the conductor?  "It's kind of both," Ritter said.  "It's knowing the music, but the director can make a difference with a different type of style, a different sound."

Freshman Megan Hamer has been playing the violin since third grade and performs with the MAYO orchestra.  "He makes playing fun," she said of Loewenheim. "He explains what he wants from you in a way that makes sense and it helps your technique. He's really good at that."


Neither Anah Hewetson nor Caitlyn Muncy normally perform with MAYO, but the sophomores took lessons away from the class.  "I can already tell that my technique has improved and my ability to sight read is a lot better," Hewetson said.  She's been playing the violin since sixth grade.


Muncy, who plays bass, said she liked the fact Loewenheim selected familiar songs.  "We may be bad at it," she said, "but it's fun playing something we know."

While guest conducting, Loewenheim stressed the importance of listening.  "Orchestra is the largest form of chamber music and chamber music is the ultimate form of music making because you have to listen," he said. "For me, that's what music is all about, listening to each other.  "What's great about orchestra," he continued, "is you have to be responsible for your part and you have to be responsible for your section, and then within the section you're responsible for the whole orchestra."

An orchestra aware of how it all sounds.

Reporter Jeff Hauersperger can be reached at 812.277.7262 or by e-mail at jeffh@tmnews.com

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Classical inspires youth
By Nicole Kauffman, Herald-Times Staff Writer
November 13, 2005


Most of the time, Jane Mitchell's art classes at Unionville Elementary School do projects based on state and Monroe County Community School Corporation requirements.  But a project for the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra's concert of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony entailed a different kind of art project for the students, a project for the students, a project Mitchell calls "freeing."

The Musical Arts Youth Orchestra put out a call for artwork inspired by the famous Beethoven symphony.  Mitchell played the music for her first- through sixth-graders after which they drew, painted and otherwise expressed their interpretations of the piece.

"The kids really love it," Mitchell said.  The project is a contest for community students in grades K-12.  There are two categories: audio and visual.  Audio entries could involve any sound-oriented interpretation ─ such as car horns or singing ─ and the winners are being featured on the radio this week in promos for the Youth Orchestra's upcoming concerts.

The visual category entries have to be suitable for wall display, and winners will get their work shown before and during upcoming concerts in Bedford and Bloomington on Friday and Nov. 20, respectively.

The results so far: In Unionville, one student said he heard waves crashing in the symphony; others got visual images of performance in their heads.  A second-grader drew a conductor and the audience; another drew a piano, and still another, a violinist.  Castles, a storm, two ballerinas, a dragon and a dungeon also made appearances.

"It's really interesting.  Some of them are really abstract,"  Mitchell Said.

At its concerts, the Youth Orchestra, directed by Thomas Loewenheim, will play the Fifth Symphony and music by Mozart.

Matt Richardson id a trombonist and three-year member of the orchestra.  He said Beethoven's Fifth is a special symphony because it's the first symphony to use a trombone section.

Since September, the orchestra has been practicing the 40-minute symphony, and Richardson said it's challenging to play the whole piece in tune with everyone else in the ensemble.

The Youth Orchestra has more then 50 players who have studied their instruments for at least three years (or made equivalent progress).  They range in age from 9 to 21.

Its mission is to provide musical training to students of all ages and backgrounds in southern Indiana.

"MAYO's been a really great experience for me," said Richardson, 18.

Reporter Nicole Kauffman can be reached at 812.331.4357 or by e-mail at nkauffman@heraldt.com

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Orchestrating a love of music
Regional youth orchestra to open new season with premiere of IU professor's composition
By Nicole Kauffman, Herald-Times Staff Writer
November 18, 2004
 

Directing the Musical Arts Youth Orchestra is about much more than readying a group of young people to show off their talents to the public.

It's about providing a learning environment for orchestra members — coaching them on how to play individual instruments, how to play in a section, how to play in a large group.

And it doesn't end there: It teaches how to evaluate similarities and differences between composers, how to listen well and how to have a good time playing.

"That's what it's really all about," music director Thomas Loewenheim said.

The Musical Arts Youth Orchestra practices Monday under
 the direction of Indiana University doctoral student
 Thomas Loewenheim at Bloomington High School North.
 Staff photo by Monty Howell

Then he added, "That's not to say we're not hoping for an incredible final product."

On Sunday, the regional orchestra — 48 musicians ages 9 to 21 — is presenting its Gala Concert at the Buskirk-Chumley Theatre.  To open the orchestra's second season, pieces by Franz Schubert, Gioacchini Rossini and Jean Sibelius will be performed, and a composition by Indiana University music professor David Dzubay will be premiered.  "It takes a fairly traditional approach," Dzubay said of his piece, "Symphonic Dance."  "It's not too far out there; it's fairly straight- forward. That's probably why I think it works well for a youth orchestra," he said.  Loewenheim said "Symphonic Dance" is challenging, but "understandable" and "catchy," an ideal piece of music for the group, whose skill levels vary. 

Orchestra members even were treated to a visit by Dzubay, who talked about the composition and sat in on a recent rehearsal.  "That's a unique experience for many of them," Loewenheim said.  Call it part of a master plan Loewenheim has.

The 33-year-old has helped the orchestra grow immensely since becoming director earlier this year, and it has doubled almost exactly since its inception.  "We have a lot, a lot, a lot of new players," he said.  Eventually, the energetic cellist wants to direct an orchestra of 120. He said when he tells people that, they laugh.

But if anyone can speak for the benefits of performing with a youth orchestra, it's Loewenheim.  Long before studying with IU's distinguished professor Janos Starker and professor Tsuyoshi Tsutsumi, Loewenheim was a member of a youth orchestra in his native Israel.  "It changed my life," he said. "The youth orchestra kept me playing and introduced me to all this literature."  Although he was a big fan of physics, math and swimming, by the time he was in high school, he knew he wanted to be a professional musician.  "It gave me that extra push," he said.

Sixteen-year-old Sho Neriki of Bloomington said he likes being in the orchestra because he can see steady improvement among his peers.  "I enjoy it because the players get better each time. I think it's great," said Neriki, a violinist and student concertmaster of the group.

Other orchestra members come from as many as seven different counties in southern Indiana, meeting for about two hours every Monday evening to practice.  And, it is with these youth that the future of live classical music lies.  If they don't stay musicians themselves, their names may appear on sponsor lists in the future, or they may take their children to concerts, Loewenheim said.  "It is such an important thing in every human being's life," he said. "We're very glad we can give them this experience."

Reporter Nicole Kauffman can be reached at 331-4357 or by e-mail at nkauffman@heraldt.com