2024 Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area Completes Global Auditions

The 2024 Youth Music Culture The Greater Bay Area (YMCG) will be held from 20 January to 1 February 2024 in the heart of the Greater Bay Area, China. Organized by the Guangdong Provincial Department of Culture and Tourism, the project will be hosted for the first time by five internationally-renowned music institutions in the Greater Bay Area: the Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Xinghai Concert Hall, and Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra from Guangdong, the Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra from Hong Kong and the Macao Orchestra from the Macao Special Administrative Region. Maestro Long Yu, Lifetime Honorary Music Director of GSO, is the Chairman of the Artistic Committee of YMCG, and Daniel Harding, internationally-renowned conductor, is the Music Director.

From 28-30 October, YMCG held a three-day, worldwide audition in Shenzhen, the core engine city of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area. Seventy percent of the applicants were young performers from 70 renowned music schools in China, Russia, the United States, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, Germany, Austria, the United Kingdom, France, Italy, the Philippines, and other countries and regions, as well as conservatories of comprehensive universities. Applicants for the 2024 YMCG Symphony Orchestra also include young musicians from more than 20 Chinese professional orchestras, including the China Philharmonic Orchestra, Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra, Shenzhen Symphony Orchestra, Hangzhou Philharmonic Orchestra, and others. YMCG also received applications from the Hong Kong Baptist University Joint International College of Beijing Normal University, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and other organizations.

The selection process lasted for three days. applicants chose between live audition and video-recorded auditions. The string examiners were the Director of Orchestral Studies and Academic Department of the School of Music of The Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), renowned violinist and educator Vera Xu; and the wind and percussion examiners were Guangzhou Symphony Orchestra's Music Director, Maestro Huang Yi, and Hong Kong Philharmonic Orchestra's Associate Principal Bass Clarinet, Lorenzo Iosco. In order to ensure the fairness, impartiality and openness of the audition, Chen Qing, Director of YMCG Executive Committee and President of GSO, was responsible for supervising the whole audition.

During the intensive selection process on 28th and 29th October, the examiners conducted a strict, detailed, and comprehensive assessment of over 1,000 live/recorded performances by hundreds of applicants from home and abroad. On 30th October, the three examiners held a special meeting to determine the shortlist and the orchestra seating order, and will gradually notify the selected applicants after the official confirmation by Music Director Daniel Harding.

Chen Qing said, YMCG focuses on long-term development, to promote the development of youth culture as a responsibility: "YMCG is a courageous exploration of promoting the construction of the Greater Bay Area and the high-quality development of Guangdong, the success of the practice. The large number of applicants, the wide range of countries and regions involved, and the diverse cultural backgrounds of the applicants are all testimony to and affirmation of the vibrant cultural vitality of the Guangdong, Hong Kong and Macao Greater Bay Area."