Letter from Executive Director
All the Opportunities
Dear Friends and Families,
A warm GCYO welcome to you as we begin a new season of music-making and awe-inspiring education. The students are the heart of our work and their needs are front and center. They will begin GCYO rehearsals one week after school starts, allowing them time to adjust to their new classes. Knowing that beginning the rehearsals so close to the first week of school can be difficult, the conductors have been working tirelessly to ensure all will run as smoothly as possible. During the summer months, they have also been meticulously planning music that will inspire and challenge all of our young artists for GCYO'S upcoming season.
Being a part of GCYO offers many and varied opportunities. For students interested in playing with an orchestra ensemble, GCYO provides great opportunities this season. Students will receive expert direction and professional coaching from our excellent conductors and coaching staff. Our student artists will be making beautiful music with their friends while performing on a major professional stage, the Peace Center Concert Hall. These opportunities are awaiting any and all who wish to join the GCYO Family. Our Spots Audition closes for registration in mid August, so there is still time to sign up. See details and sign up here.
GCYO has an ensemble for almost every student from new to strings (Prelude strings ensemble) to instrument strings (Intermezzo ensemble.) For woodwinds, brass and percussion players not yet ready for our top level ensemble, the Philharmonic ensemble might be a good place for these students. For any level of ensemble, auditioning is a vital part of the process. It is a challenge for all students and they will be asked to play difficult music but it is a valuable learning process, as well. Students interested in playing more advanced music from the symphonic repertoire with other like-minded young artists should look to GCYO'S Young Artists Orchestra, affectionately known as YAO.
As you see, there is a wealth of opportunities for young student musicians supported by a solid organization and an extraordinary musical staff.
And there are more opportunities for accepted and enrolled students. Because of donor support we can offer limited private lessons scholarships, tuition scholarships, and summer study scholarships. GCYO students have studied all around the country during the summer at institutions such as Brevard Music Center and Luzerne Music Center, Jacob's School of Music Summer Strings Academy, Hilton Head Chamber Music Institute, Furman University and Bob Jones University Summer Orchestra Camps, etc. we love to award deserving and needing students financial assistance to follow their dreams.
Opportunities abound for our advanced students going to college. Not all GCYO students will study music in college, but excellence in music undoubtedly gives them a leg up, as they say, in college admittance. GCYO students have received generous scholarships to colleges across the college. Come to our Spring Orchestras Concert and see where our seniors are going and what they are studying. It varies from Engineering to Cello Performance. One student, Dylan Goldbach, recently had an extraordinary and well- deserved opportunity: he was selected as a member of the National Youth Orchestra. He will go on to study with a full scholarship at Vanderbilt University.
There are also opportunities for area music teachers. We invite you to connect with our conducting staff. Private instructors and school music teachers are the backbone of our programs. The opportunity for you is to have an outside organization pace student learning by offering benchmarks via our auditions, ensemble acceptances, and repertoire selections. We inspire achievement by holding chair auditions. Playing in a large ensemble is opportunity both for the student playing and the teacher advising. In ensembles they can bring the skills you've taught them to the table, as they say, and have a chance to play important repertoire.
Opportunities abound for our local businesses, and advertisers to reach a large and growing populace of families interested in education. Additionally our concerts welcome thousands of listeners of all types. What unites them is the love of supporting their families and friends. If you are interested in supporting us via concert sponsorships or advertising in our digital program and in this newsletter, please don't hesitate to reach out to me: david.kiser@gcyo.net. We are looking for naming concert sponsors for each of our three concerts at the Peace Center this season.
And very importantly there are opportunities for donors, benefactors, philanthropists who are interested in supporting youth music education in Greenville, South Carolina. We need your support. By donating to GCYO you are ensuring the future of our organization, a top-level education in the musical arts for school-aged children in the South Carolina Upstate. This is your community and you can make a difference by supporting the arts through GCYO. Consider giving to support our Scholarships program, or giving to help us bring in internationally renowned guest artists to work with the students. Learn more about how to donate by scrolling down below or reaching out directly to me about donor benefits.
We also have opportunities to volunteer. If you have non-profit board experience or connections to local corporations, law firms, governmental organizations, etc. consider looking into serving a term on the GCYO board. You can give back by bringing your expertise. Don't hesitate to reach out to me directly. We also need the involvement of parents from time to time as volunteers. If you are interested in volunteering send the GCYO administrative assistant an email: jana@gcyo.net.
One more opportunity. And this is a good one. The opportunity to come to our concerts and be inspired by the performances of our students. We'll soon send out the new concert schedule and a link to tickets. We have a number of different and exciting things planned. Until then..
Thanks,
David Kiser
Executive Director
GCYO
david.kiser@gcyo.net
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