Rochester Philharmonic Youth Orchestra to tour Italy

During the school spring break in April, the 95 student musicians of the RPYO and their parent chaperones will embark on a musical tour of northern Italy. This ten-day visit continues the RPYO's recent tradition of undertaking a major tour every three years. Since 1995, the youth orchestra has visited England, Germany, and France, performing concerts under the direction of RPYO Music Director David Harman in major performance halls and churches.

Italy was chosen as the destination of the RPYO's 2004 tour because of its central role in the development of European music and art. It is an opportunity for RPYO musicians to see the country where the greatest string instruments were created, where composers and musicians from throughout Europe found inspiration, where opera flourished. It is also an occasion for them to become acquainted with a country with which so many families of Rochester have close ties.

The youth orchestra will depart on Friday, April 9, for Milan. After touring this important center of Italian business, fashion, and industry, the RPYO will stay in the popular health spa town south of Milan, Salsomaggiore Terme, to perform a concert there on Easter Sunday evening. The orchestra will visit nearby Cremona, made famous for its violin-makers, such as Amati, Guarneri, and Stradivarius, whose craft has never been surpassed. On the way to the medieval city of Bologna east along the Po River Valley, the tour will pass through Verdi country, the home of the great and beloved opera composer Giuseppe Verdi.

In the Bologna area the RPYO will present two concerts. The city of Imola, a town dating back to the Roman era, has invited the orchestra to perform in its fine concert hall. In the town of Cento, the RPYO will perform as part of a music festival. Traveling by motorcoach with Italian-speaking guides, the students will then cross the Apennine range of mountains, heading south to Florence for a visit to this renowned Tuscan center of Renaissance art and architecture.

The tour finishes in Rome with tours of ancient Roman monuments and Saint Peter's Square, of the famed opera house of Rome, and of some of Rome's glorious churches, fountains, and piazzas. The RPYO's final concert of the tour will be at the University of Rome and will feature several of Verdi's most famous opera choruses presented together with an Italian chorus from the university. It will be a glorious finale to an unforgettable journey.

RPYO students have raised funds for this tour over the past two years through the sale of tickets to their concerts, of gift baskets of Italian specialty food items, of raffle tickets, and through many other individual projects. A separate but parallel tour of RPYO families and friends will travel throughout the same area and meet with the RPYO at the four concert sites.