Carnegie Hall's World Orchestra Week (WOW!) Festival Launches Next Month

Hundreds of teen instrumentalists from around the globe will come together in New York City this summer for World Orchestra Week (WOW!), a historic celebration of international youth orchestras, presented by Carnegie Hall from August 1–7. Inspired by the Hall’s three critically acclaimed national youth ensembles—the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA), NYO2, and NYO Jazz—this ambitious international initiative will bring five youth orchestras from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America to New York for high-level music making with some of today’s most internationally-renowned artists plus cultural exchange activities among the orchestras over the course of one week.

The seven ensembles featured in the 2024 festival include: the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela; the Africa United Youth Orchestra; the Beijing Youth Orchestra; the European Union Youth Orchestra; the Afghan Youth Orchestra plus Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA and NYO2.

As part of the festival, each orchestra will perform on consecutive days in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage collaborating with celebrated artists including conductors Teddy Abrams, Marin Alsop, Gustavo Dudamel, William Eddins, Iván Fischer, Lü Jia, and Tiago Moreira da Silva, and soloists Andrew Brady, Isata Kanneh-Mason, Goitsemang Lehobye, Anthony McGill, Demarre McGill, Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, Jean-Yves Thibaudet, Titus Underwood, and Wu Man. 

All seven WOW! festival concerts will be heard worldwide on the Carnegie Hall Livebroadcast and digital series. Produced by WQXR and Carnegie Hall, the week of performances will be broadcast on WQXR 105.9 FM in New York and reach listeners everywhere streamed online at wqxr.org and carnegiehall.org/wqxr.

In addition to public performances at Carnegie Hall, the community of more than 700 young musicians will take part in their own cultural exchange and communal music-making experiences throughout the week. A major highlight will be conductor Gustavo Dudamelleading all festival participants in a massive “play-in” event at New York’s Jacob Javits Convention Center on Monday morning, August 5.

Cultural exchange is a key part of WOW!, bringing together young musicians across languages, cultures, and backgrounds. These activities build on ten years of international touring and peer-to-peer exchange by Carnegie Hall’s national youth ensembles during which young musicians have served as musical ambassadors for the US while visiting some of the greatest musical capitals of the world. Click here to watch a video on the impact of cultural exchange within Carnegie Hall’s national youth ensembles.

“We’re thrilled to bring these superb young musicians from around the world together this summer as part of World Orchestra Week,” said Clive Gillinson, Executive and Artistic Director of Carnegie Hall. “This special festival celebrates the pivotal role that music can play in society, bringing so many of the finest young musicians from around the world together across languages, cultures, and backgrounds. We know that these young people have extraordinary potential to become the leaders of tomorrow as musicians and also as changemakers in other important fields. This will be an inspiring week of collaboration as we truly bring the world together through music.”

World Orchestra Week (WOW!) Performances:

World Orchestra Week kicks off on Thursday, August 1 at 7:00 p.m. with a performance by NYO2—Carnegie Hall’s national youth orchestra featuring outstanding younger musicians from across the US, ages 14–17—led by Teddy Abrams, Music Director of the Louisville Orchestra. The evening’s program includes Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Fantasy Overture, and Stravinsky’s The Firebird Suite (1919 version), plus the world premiere of KINSFOLKNEM, a new wind concertante (co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall) by Jasmine Barnes, featuring principal players from leading US orchestras including flutist Demarre McGill, oboist Titus Underwood, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and bassoonist Andrew Brady.

The next day, Friday, August 2 at 7:00 p.m., Gustavo Dudamel leads the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela in a program to include John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine along with Latin American classics Mediodía en el llano (Midday on the Plains)by Estévez, and Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia, which the orchestra performed in its unforgettable international debut at the Salzburg Festival. The second half of the concert is anchored by Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The orchestra is comprised of talented young musicians, ages 10–17, who take part in Venezuela’s El Sistema program.

On Saturday, August 3 at 7:00 p.m., audiences will enjoy the North American debut of the new Africa United Youth Orchestra (AUYO), which is organized by South Africa’s national orchestra, the Mzansi National Philharmonic Orchestra. The AUYO is made up of stellar musicians from several African countries including South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Mozambique and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Led by American conductor William Eddins, the first half of the concert will highlight groundbreaking works by South African composers M.M. Moerane and M. Khumalo. Opening the program will be Moerane’s Fatse La Heso (My Country), followed by arias from Khumalo’s uShaka KaSenzagakhona (a dramatic work about the legendary King of the Zulus) and Princess Magogo (the first Zulu opera), sung by South African sopranos Goitsemang Lehobye and Masabane Cecilia Rangwanasha, who is also featured in one of Ndodana-Breen's Three Orchestral Songs on Poems of Ingrid Jonker. The concert concludes with Dvořák’s Symphony No.9, “From the New World,” featuring members from NYO-USA. 

On Sunday afternoon, August 4 at 4:00 p.m., Lü Jia leads the Beijing Youth Orchestra, an ensemble newly created by China’s National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA). Lü Jia, who has previously performed at Carnegie Hall as conductor of the renowned China NCPA Orchestra, leads a program to include both Western and Chinese orchestral works, including the New York premiere of Zhao Jiping’s Pipa Concerto No. 2 with guest soloist Wu Man, Bao Yuankai’s selections from Chinese Sights and Sounds, and Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5.

Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA takes the stage on Monday, August 5 at 7:00 p.m., led by conductor Marin Alsop. The orchestra performs Barber’s Symphony No. 1; Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue featuring pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist; and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade. Eight musicians from Polyphony—the Nazareth-based educational program that brings together Arab and Jewish musicians from Israel in performance—join NYO-USA for their New York training residency and Carnegie Hall performance, taking part in the WOW! festival. Following its New York concert, NYO-USA embarks on a South American tour.

The European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) conducted by Iván Fischer, performs on Tuesday, August 6 at 7:00 p.m. with a program featuring Masquerade by Anna Clyne, recently appointed as the BBC Philharmonic’s composer in association; Dohnányi’s Variations on a Nursery Tune, Op. 25 with pianist Isata Kanneh-Mason as soloist; and Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No. 1. Founded in 1976, the EUYO, comprised of extraordinary musicians, ages 16–26, representing all 27 European Union countries—has served as the EU’s cultural ambassador with performances around the globe for close to 50 years. Four musicians from the Youth Symphony Orchestra of Ukraine join the EUYO as special guests for this performance. The orchestra last appeared at Carnegie Hall in 2012.

The closing concert of the festival on Wednesday, August 7 at 7:00 p.m. features the Afghan Youth Orchestra, an inspiring collective of Afghan young musicians who were forced to flee their country in 2021. Featuring dedicated young musicians (ages 14–22) from the Afghanistan National Institute of Music, the storied Afghan Youth Orchestra plays both Western and traditional Afghan instruments in repertoire that includes Western symphonic works, original compositions, and Afghan folk music. Recent tours have taken this extraordinary orchestra to the United Kingdom, where it recently made its Southbank Centre debut, and across Europe, including a historic performance that opened the 2023 UN Human Rights Conference in Switzerland. The ensemble—a symbol of hope for the people of Afghanistan, where music is currently banned—returns to Carnegie Hall for the first time in more than a decade. The young musicians are joined by members of the European Union Youth Orchestra in a special program that includes arrangements by conductor Tiago Moreira da Silva of works by Nainawaz, Brahms, Kodály, and popular artist Sediq Shabab.

New York University (NYU) Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development is a key partner in Carnegie Hall’s upcoming youth orchestra festival. The participating orchestras will be housed on NYU’s iconic campus, located in Greenwich Village, where they will undertake their initial rehearsals and connect with peers from around the world, taking part in cultural exchange and cross-orchestral activities.

For the most up-to-date program information for World Orchestra Week (WOW!) festival performances, please visit carnegiehall.org/wow.

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