NPR goes inside the NJSO’s #OrchestraYou

Mar 20, 2014

NPR’s Anastasia Tsioulcas joined NJSO concertgoers, professional musicians and students at the Orchestra’s first #OrchestraYou—a special post-concert session on Saturday, March 15, at NJPAC in Newark.

Tsioulcas shares her experience of playing violin among amateur and professional musicians:

After the last notes sounded, I wandered through a sea of stands to chat with a trio of beaming bassoonists: 19-year-old Jessica Hughes, who studies clarinet with NJSO clarinetist Andy Lamy; 15-year-old Natangel Robinson, who has been playing bassoon for all of seven months; and Cecilia Sweeney, an older amateur. ("Let's just say that unlike Natangel, I'm not in high school.")

Robinson told me that playing with this group, even for literally just a few minutes, was simply amazing. "I got such a feeling of ... euphoria," he told me, searching for just the right word. "There's nothing like this. There's so much energy here, so much of a sense that you're part of something much bigger than yourself."

If this kind of effort catches fire either in New Jersey or nationally, all the better. Not only was it incredibly fun, but it served as a good reminder that music-making shouldn't be divided into producers and consumers, with most people locked into a passive experience. After the performance, I was talking with Lamy when Charlene Green, the assistant head usher at NJPAC, came over to us, smiling. She turned to the clarinetist and said, "This makes me want to dust off my clarinet."

Read the full feature at npr.org.