FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Katie English, 267-974-1250
PYO Announces Tune Up Philly Benefit Concert from Princeton High School Classical Musicians
Benefit Concert to be held Friday, April 8 at 8:00 p.m. at the PRS Performing Arts Center
Philadelphia, PA – April 5, 2011. (Download PDF) Maestro Louis Scaglione, President and Music Director of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra organization (PYO) and Stanford Thompson, Director of PYO’s Tune Up Philly program, today announced a Tune Up Philly benefit recital at Princeton High School on Friday, April 8 featuring three young musicians, members of the Princeton Regional Schools Orchestras. Ben Wulfman (French horn), Julian Edgren (piano) and Farshad Tahvildar-Zadeh (violin, piano), students at Princeton High School, will perform an evening of chamber music at 8:00 p.m. at the PRS Performing Arts Center to support a new after-school program for 80 elementary school students.
“We are delighted that three accomplished young musicians have organized a special evening of chamber music to support Tune Up Philly,” said Maestro Louis Scaglione, President and Music Director of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra organization. “There has been a lot of critical community support to fund this new after-school program but I am pleased and impressed by the generosity of these young men, especially Ben Wulfman who organized the benefit.”
"I wanted to contribute to an amazing program, Tune Up Philly," said Ben Wulfman, a junior at Princeton High School and member of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra who was inspired to organize the benefit during a PYO rehearsal last fall.
Tune Up Philly is the new, after-school musical education program of the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra at St. Francis de Sales School in southwest Philadelphia designed to nurture urban children living in challenging social and economic conditions by keeping them engaged in success through weekday out-of-school hour’s musical instruction. Most of the 80 students in Tune Up Philly did not previously study classical music. The program commenced in September 2010 and will run through July 2011, offering free concerts to the public. Instructed by a dozen local, professional musicians, the students in Tune Up Philly train five days a week with concentrations in woodwind, brass, strings, percussion, choral and general music education. Tune Up Philly believes that music education is a powerful vehicle for children to master skills that will enable them to acquire valuable tools for cooperative learning, teamwork, academic success and self-esteem.
The concert will feature solo and chamber works by Rachmaninoff, Brahms, Persichetti, and more, plus solidarity orchestral numbers by members of the Princeton Regional Schools orchestras and the Princeton community under the direction of Robert Loughran. Tickets are $10 ($5 for students and seniors) and can be obtained by calling the PHS Orchestra office at 609-806-4280, ext. 3093; tickets will also be available at the door. The PRS Performing Arts Center is located at 25 Valley Road, Princeton, NJ 08540.
About the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra: Founded in 1939, the Philadelphia Youth Orchestra is one of the nation’s oldest classical music training and orchestra performance programs for gifted and talented students from the Tri-State region. Lead by Maestro Louis Scaglione, PYO’s companion ensembles include the Philadelphia Young Artists Orchestra (PYAO), formed in 1996; Bravo Brass, added to the program in 2003; Philadelphia Region Youth String Music (PRYSM) created in 2007; and the Musicopia String Orchestra partnership, which began in 2008. Young musicians from ages six through 21 are selected by competition audition and have represented the United States on five continents. The Philadelphia Youth Orchestra (PYO) offers classical musical performances to the Greater Philadelphia region each year and supports musical education to children from Philadelphia’s more challenging neighborhoods through its newest after-school program launched in 2010, Tune Up Philly.
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