MUSIC

Aaron Kula conducts NEC's Festival Youth Orchestra in its 13th season.

These young musicians ages 13–18, who come from Asia, South America, and throughout the United States, participate in the only urban orchestra training program at a conservatory in the U.S. with 80 members and 16 faculty coaches.

The FYO will perform Duke Ellington's jazz symphony Black, Brown and Beige, a work that since its 1943 debut has been performed more often in excerpt than in its entirety. Wynton Marsalis, who has led performances of this work by the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, has advised Aaron Kula in preparing this performance. Since one of the original performances by Duke Ellington and his orchestra of Black, Brown and Beige took place in Boston's Symphony Hall, this can be seen as a homecoming for this music.

Dvorák, Symphony No. 9

Ellington Black, Brown and Beige

Ravel, Bolero