With their GRAMMY Award, Repper and the musicians of the orchestra, who range in age from 12 to 20, prevailed over some of their idols and today’s most recognised classical musicians, including Gustavo Dudamel and the Los Angeles Philharmonic, and John Williams and the Berlin Philharmonic.
The GRAMMY win is the latest in a remarkable series of events for NYYS, including the original inspiration to make the recording during the height of the COVID pandemic and the album scaling the Billboard classical charts to Number 1.
The orchestra’s first studio recording was made in the midst of the COVID pandemic. Repper recalls, “The NYYS, like other orchestras, had its entire slate of concerts cancelled in the spring of 2020. Performing live was impossible, but we were determined to create a way to make music and bring it to our audience. So I suggested making an album, and in November 2020 that’s what we did!”
Recorded at the DiMenna Center in New York City, each socially distanced section of the orchestra was recorded individually, sometimes playing to click track. The logistics were masterminded by producer Judith Sherman, who remarks, “the whole orchestra was never in the same room at the same time, but you wouldn’t know by listening to the result.”
Capping the GRAMMY win for Repper and NYYS, Sherman took home the GRAMMY for Producer of the Year, Classical, her 14th in the category. Prior to the 65th GRAMMY Awards ceremony, Sherman was honored by the Recording Academy's Producers & Engineers Wing for her accomplishments as a pioneering woman in the field of classical music.
