The Greater Miami Youth Symphony Orchestra, from Florida in the USA, together with the Galway Youth Orchestra Jazz Ensemble, presents a concert in the Cathedral on Thursday 27 March 2014 at 19:30. The programme includes music by Bach, Vivaldi, Sarasate and others. Admission is free.
Founded as the All-Miami Youth Symphony by Robert Strassburg in 1958, the GMYS was created to foster a love of music in young people and to enrich the cultural life of the community. The mission of the Greater Miami Youth Symphony is to instill life-long values of discipline, teamwork, responsibility, respect, and cultural appreciation in young musicians, ages five through eighteen, through learning, rehearsing, and performing in a professional, positive environment; to enrich the cultural foundation of our community by reaching out to and recruiting young musicians from different cultural, ethnic and economic backgrounds; and to train young people through teaching, rehearsals, and performances to function together as first rate orchestras and ensembles that bring the communities together in outstanding music performances.
GMYS is an independent five-level orchestra programme dedicated to training young musicians between 5 and 18 years of age. Conceived as a complementary facet to musical instruction in the schools, GMYS has continuously succeeded in presenting high caliber performances to South Florida audiences. The GMYS is funded in part by the Children’s Trust, which is a dedicated source of revenue established by voter referendum to improve the lives of children and families in Miami-Dade County, Florida. GMYS is also supported in part by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners, the City of Miami Beach, Cultural Affairs Program, and Cultural Arts Council, the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture, the City of Coral Gables, Citizens Interested in the Arts Inc, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
The Director
As a dynamic, diverse musician, Ms Chen enjoys a dual career as a performer and an educator. She received her Bachelor of Music from the Curtis Institute of Music and her Masters of Music from the University of Miami in violin performance. She was a member of the Florida Philharmonic Orchestra from 1994 until its demise in 2003. As an educator, she is currently teaching at Lynn University in Boca Raton and was the Interim Director of Orchestra at Florida International University from 2009-2010. Ms. Chen taught violin and chamber music at the Frost School of Music, University of Miami from 2004-2009, and she has led Youth Orchestras in concert Halls such as Arsht Center in Miami and Carnegie Hall in New York City. As an international violin soloist, she has appeared with many orchestras around the globe. She was the winner of the 1999 Young Concert Artist of the Year awarded by the National Concert Hall of Taipei, Taiwan and a Concerto Competition Winner at the University of Miami in 2003. She is currently the Concertmaster of the Ars Flores Symphony and a member of the Florida Grand Opera Orchestra. She is also the founder and the violinist of the chamber ensemble Dynamic Strings. As a recording artist, she is on dozens of award winning CDs including for Sony, EMI, and Warner Brothers. Ms Chen has been broadcast on National Public Radio and the Public Broadcast System. She has performed the US National Anthem multiple times at the Miami Dolphins football games and appeared on the live international television broadcast of the 2005 MTV Video Music Awards.