Love of music links Memphis Youth Symphony alumni
The past, present and future are in everything done by the Memphis Youth Symphony.
On Saturday, alumni from the organization that has been molding musicians for 43 years will gather to perform and celebrate.
Michelle Walker (top), who just completed her 26th year with the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award. Alisa Horn, a string player and freelancer in New York, has been organizing the concert featuring musicians molded by the Youth Symphony.
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Michelle Walker, assistant principal violist of the Memphis Symphony Orchestra, joined the youth symphony when she was 13 and spent six years there developing her art.
"I credit that with preparing me for a professional career as a musician," she says. "I had been playing viola for eight months and was still learning to play, but they took a chance on me anyway and fortunately it paid dividends."
Walker just finished her 26th year with the MSO and is being honored Saturday with the second annual Distinguished Alumni Award.
She will also be among dozens of alumni performing at a concert featuring a variety of tunes and virtuosi who came out of the Youth Symphony.
Alisa Horn, a string player who is a freelancer in New York, has been organizing the event. "It came about as fundraiser idea for the Youth Symphony as a way to show support for group. The alumni have been so successful not just in music but in other areas and we wanted bring as many people as we could to participate."
Horn says that most of the alumni are professional musicians, many in Memphis but some have traveled worldwide. Other alumni have careers as diverse as teaching chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, working as physicians or in government jobs.
But their love of music and affection for the Youth Symphony are bringing them together this weekend.
Vincent de Frank was founder of the Memphis Sinfonietta in 1952 which would later become the Memphis Symphony Orchestra. He also founded the Memphis Youth Symphony to give local youngsters access to classical performing opportunities. Walker says de Frank was the key figure in her musical development. "He was very supporting and encouraged me and made a huge difference."
The Ridgeway High School graduate played under his tutelage the six years she was with the youth orchestra.
He was always challenging her. "He was always on me about something, stopping and correcting me. At one point I was discouraged, but he told me that if he didn't feel I could do it, he wouldn't have said anything at all."
His nurturing and professionalism inspired Walker to keep at it. "He always picked repertoires that challenged us," she says. "We didn't do arrangements, we did the real compositions." Tchaikovsky's Fifth Symphony was one such and Walker remembers it as scary.
But the payoff was when she later joined the Memphis Symphony Orchestra with de Frank at the helm. That first year, the orchestra performed Tchaikovsky's Fifth. And it remains her favorite piece.
"A Musical Homecoming": Memphis Youth Symphony Alumni Concert
Saturday, 7:30 p.m. at First Congregational Church, 1000 S. Cooper. Reception 5:30 to 7 p.m. for young musicians and alumni. Tickets: $15, students $10, with proceeds benefiting the Memphis Youth Symphony. Call 327-5078.
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