New Arrangements Performed by Hyde Park Youth Symphony and Uniting Voices Chicago Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir

Congratulations to the Hyde Park Youth Symphony and Uniting Voices Chicago Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir for their incredible performance on May 8th at the Reva & David Logan Center for the Arts.

In addition to my work as Executive Director for the Hyde Park Youth Symphony, I was asked to arrange some works for the orchestra and choir to perform together. This was a fun challenge as, like many youth orchestras, not all standard instruments are available due to enrollment. The HPYS doesn’t have bassoon players or horn players, so the task was to arrange the music for a more “non-standard” ensemble and include a lot of doubling to help balance with the choir.

I don’t often write for orchestra with chorus – although quite a few folks have been asking me to work on an opera – so this was a fun change of pace. I have to call out Dorico for how amazingly easy it is to work with lyrics in the program. This was incredibly more smooth process than working with Finale to prepare orchestra parts, chorus book, and full score.

Many thanks to Artistic Director Matthew Sheppard and the whole team at Uniting Voices Chicago Hyde Park Neighborhood Choir, especially conductor Magdalena Delgado for the fun opportunity.

Photos by Donglin Liu.