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Choosing music for Youth and Amateur ensembles is a tricky business... you have different constraints compared to picking music for a professional ensemble. In a professional ensemble, you are more constrained by budget, available players, and thematic ideas. These are the sorts of things that I'm used to... and if you ask people to play something, then they just do it. You take care to choose people and personnel that won't be he limiting factor.

However, for youth and amateur ensembles, you are more constrained by skill and ability. Often the ability is quite varied, and you need to pick music that is both not too difficult for the ensemble as a whole, and not too difficult for the individual players and sections. Oddly enough, there is rarely any sort of budget constraint, and the problem tends to seem to be that there are too many people rather than a shortage!

Of course, the way that rehearsals are scheduled are quite different as well. In a professional group, you would be pushing it to get more than a couple of days of rehearsal. Actually, I hate rehearsing anyway... so, I'm quite fond of the shorter rehearsal periods. I prefer to play with people who are quite aware and flexible anyway, so that very little needs to be decided. There is nothing more frustrating than playing by a set pattern.... sort of like music by committee... and there are more than enough musicians that think that "work" or at the least the appearance of it, is the same as playing music. For me, it feels like the death of heart and spirit.

Anyway, for the youth and amateur groups, it tends that the rehearsal periods are a single rehearsal once a week for about 8-10 weeks. This is due to the fact that most of the people have jobs and lives that aren't related to music, and to block off several days to play only is usually not really going to work!

That said... there is a joy and enthusiasm that is in these groups that I sometimes find lacking in professional ensembles.

So, picking music... these last week, I've had to pick a programme for two concerts in a few months away. One that is for a youth orchestra, and another for an amateur ensemble. In both case, I really really want to introduce them to some really cool music (especially if it comes from my particular specialisation of Baroque music)...

For the amateur ensemble, I have complete free reign to do this... they asked me to take this session as a specialist, and so I will try to pick out some really amazing gems for them to play. I have a shortlist of pieces, and from there it is a question of what is possible in the time frame for the group. I'm still up in the air about a couple of pieces, and it might be that I will have to do substitutions... and chunk in some movements and remove others.

The youth orchestra is a little bit trickier... I have to keep in mind that the kids need to be engaged by a range of music tastes, some of which might not be completely classical. With the adult amateurs, they are there by choice... but for the kids, not all of them are really there from their own free choice! Plus, they don't have the patience or ability to do complete works either... and so, I do have to do some arrangements and cuts to make sure that everything is within the ability of the group.

For some of the more "engaging" works, I have chosen some arrangement of Studio Ghibli music... it was a special request from a number of players in the group. Not everything works well for the ensemble, there is a good deal of nice stuff... but much of it is a bit difficult as well. So, in the end, I found some nice pieces from Ponyo, and arranged them myself. I hope that they will appreciate it!

Meanwhile, I think I need to finalise the program for the adult group... I think I have it, but I think I might also present it with a number of options, just to give them a bit of a choice in the exact "sort" of programming for their concert!

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