The Chautauqua Region Community Foundation has awarded two grants from the Blossom Fund to the Chautauqua Regional Youth Symphony (CRYS). The funds will support CRYS’s Chautauqua Weekend and the honorarium for Conductor and Music Director Bryan Eckenrode. The Youth Symphony is pictured here in Chautauqua Institution’s Elizabeth Lenna Hall at their 2014 Chautauqua Weekend, with Maestro Eckenrode at the right.
JAMESTOWN – The Chautauqua Region Community Foundation has awarded two grants to the Chautauqua Regional Youth Symphony (CRYS).
“We are so grateful to the Community Foundation for this support,” said CRYS board president Tanya Anderson, “and we’re thrilled with the confidence it represents.”
Both grants are funded through the Community Foundation’s Blossom Fund. One supports the honorarium for Conductor and Music Director Bryan Eckenrode and the other funds the Youth Symphony’s Chautauqua Weekend.
Maestro Eckenrode, widely acclaimed for both his performance and his conducting, took the musical helm of CRYS in 2003. At that time there was a single orchestra, which is now the Youth Symphony, CRYS’s premier performance group of highly talented and motivated high school and college musicians.
Two more orchestras were formed under Eckenrode’s leadership: Prelude Strings for beginning string musicians and the Young Artists Orchestra for intermediate players.
The Chautauqua Weekend is an immersion experience for the Youth Symphony. The Weekend includes an overnight at Chautauqua Institution’s Bellinger Hall, private lessons with expert instructors, participation in small group lessons, and extensive rehearsing.
In April CRYS students will travel to Rochester for a meet-and-greet with members of the
Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO). Then they will enjoy an evening performance of the RPO accompanying The Peking Acrobats in Kodak Hall at Eastman Theatre.
All three CRYS orchestras have begun rehearsals for their Spring Gala Concert on Sunday afternoon, May 3, at the Reg Lenna Center for The Arts in downtown Jamestown.
For more information about the Chautauqua Regional Youth Symphony, call (716) 664-2465, ext. 202, or visit the website at www.CRYouthSymphony.com.
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