The Portland Youth Philharmonic Association is an organization of several orchestras made up of young people from ages 7 to 22 in Portland, Oregon. It was founded in 1924 as the Portland Junior Symphony and is the oldest established youth orchestra in the United States. It is currently led by recently appointed conductor and music director David Hattner.

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History

The roots of the ensemble go back to Harney County, Oregon. In 1910, Mary V. Dodge, a violinist and music teacher, moved to Burns. After securing funding from local businessmen and Portland attorney and writer Charles Erskine Scott Wood, she purchased instruments for local children and organized them into an ensemble called the Sagebrush Symphony Orchestra . The group played its first concert in 1912. ^[1] The ensembled toured Oregon until 1918, when Dodge moved to Portland. In Portland, Dodge founded another youth orchestra, the Irvington School Orchestra. This ensemble became the nucleus of Portland Junior Symphony which was formed in 1924. ^[2]

Organization

(PYP) consists of four ensembles: the Portland Youth Philharmonic Orchestra, the Portland Youth Conservatory Orchestra, the Portland Youth Wind Ensemble, and the Young String Ensemble. ^[3] Each group is selected in open auditions in the spring and fall and is highly selective.

Past repertoires have included: Mahler Symphony No. 5, Bruckner Symphony No. 4, Rachmaninoff Symphonic Dances, Debussy La Mer, Bartok Concerto for Orchestra, Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto No. 3, Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, Prokofiev Symphony No. 5, Mahler Symphony No. 1, Bartok's Miraculous Mandarin, Stravinsky Petrouska, Respighi Pines of Rome, Brahms Symphony No. 4, Brahms Symphony No. 2, and Stravinsky's Rite of Spring.

Past conductors and music directors include Jacques Gershkovitch (1923-1953), Jacob Avshalomov (1953-1994), Huw Edwards^{[disambiguation needed]} (1995-2002), and Mei-Ann Chen (2002-2007).

Tours

The Philharmonic has gone on eight international tours: 1970 - England, Portugal, and Italy 1979 - Japan 1984 - Yugoslavia and Austria 1989 - Austria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, and Germany 1992 - Japan and Korea 1994 - Germany 2000 - New Zealand and Austria 2007 - Taiwan and Korea

In 1998 the Portland Youth Philharmonic also represented the United States at the Banff International Festival of Youth Orchestras.

References

1. Sage Brush Symphony
2. The History of America's First Established Youth Orchestra
3. About the Portland Youth Philharmonic