Performance highlights past, present young composers at the Barre Opera House March 19

March 10, 2023  |  By Waterbury Roundabout 

The Vermont Philharmonic is Vermont's oldest community orchestra, making music in central Vermont since 1959. File photo

Music Director Lou Kosma and the Vermont Philharmonic along with the Green Mountain Youth Symphony present their annual Family Concert at 2 p.m. on Sunday, March 19, at the Barre Opera House. 

The program for “Awakenings: Music of Young Composers” will feature music by well-known composers when they were young and new music created by two Vermont student composers. 

When one hears the names Handel, Mozart, Mendelssohn, or John Phllip Sousa, they don’t think “teenager.”  But of course they were teenagers before they became the famous composers we now know.

Handel was 19 when he wrote his first opera, “Almira,” as was Sousa when he wrote his first march, “Review.”  Mendelssohn was 15 when he published his first symphony, and Mozart published his eighth symphony when he was only 12!  George Bizet was the old man of the group, aged 25 when he wrote his opera “The Pearl Fishers.”  

The program will also highlight two teen-aged Vermont composers in the Music-Comp program at Montpelier High School. The Vermont Philharmonic will perform Callum Robechek’s “And in a Moment” and Chase Ehrlich’s “Spirit of the Sky.”  Robechek’s “Morning Fog” was on the program at the 2020 Family Concert, and Ehrlich won the Masterclef Competition in November 2021. (Listen to original pieces they composed for a program honoring essential workers in 2020 on the Music-Comp website.) 

Members of the Green Mountain Youth Symphony rehearse at the Barre Opera House in late 2022. Courtesy photo

The March 19 concert also will feature young performers as the Green Mountain Youth Symphony will come on stage to perform music of Gustav Holst. Under the artistic direction of Robert Blais, the Green Mountain Youth Symphony is a community of young musicians founded in 2001 and now involving over 100 student musicians from Central and Northern Vermont and New Hampshire.

The youth symphony musicians will join the Philharmonic to conclude the program with the rousing finale from Tchaikovsky’s “1812 Overture,” complete with audience-engaged “cannon” fire.

The Vermont Philharmonic is the state’s oldest community orchestra, making music in central Vermont since 1959.

Tickets: $20 for adults, $15 for seniors, $5 for students; available at the door or online at vermontphilharmonic.com.