Acclaimed Tenor Leads Youth Orchestra At Midtown Fundraiser
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Acclaimed tenor Placido Domingo made music not with his voice but his baton Wednesday night as he conducted a Midtown orchestra made up of city school kids. NY1's Jeanine Ramirez filed the following report.Young musicians from Brooklyn and Harlem got some tips and inspiration from living legend Placido Domingo before they took the stage Wednesday night. And Domingo was their maestro.
"I think it's exciting and I think it's a big opportunity to meet Placido Domingo," said young musician Baldwin Cyriaque.
Thirty-five fourth, fifth and sixth grade students played Handel’s "Hallelujah Chorus" -- a piece they've been practicing since November.
"The music I like to play is Hallelujah chorus because I feel the joy inside," said young musician Tamika Merise.
The kids are part of a program called Harmony, which offers free after-school instruction based on Venezuela's acclaimed children's orchestra system called El Sistema.
NY1 visited PS 152 in Flatbush last year to highlight Harmony's first site in the city. Kids from that site and a second Harmony location at PS 129 performed together on stage. The famed tenor told them he was a young performer too.
"I've been a musician all my life. My parents they were singers so I started very early studying music and I started very early also performing and I've been over 50 years now singing," said Domingo.
The performance that took place in Midtown at Gotham Hall was a fundraiser for the Harmony program.
The group provides the instruments for a rigorous music training that takes place five days a week.
"The way our model works is we recruit young musicians to do the teaching with us. So we recruit students and young alumni in music education programs. We provide them with paid training and then we place them in our after school programs in schools and community centers," said Harmony Program Director Anne Fitzgibbon.
Meantime, the Harmony program continues to grow. It now has a third location in the city opening in Upper Manhattan.
"The goal of the Harmony program in the long run is to combine all of our sites to create one big orchestra so this is just our trial run for what's to come," said PS 152 Conductor Christian Alonzo.
The program hopes to achieve in New York what it has in Venezuela, which is to reach thousands of economically disadvantaged children.