Announced on April 12, 2024, by its Founder & Artistic Director Dionysis Grammenos at the Delphi Economic Forum, the Greek Youth Symphony Orchestra (GYSO) will travel to New York City and perform at Carnegie Hall, one of the most prestigious concert halls of the world.
This event is being hosted by The Hellenic Initiative, and with the support of American and Greek donors. The concert will take place Sunday, 7:30 pm, on November 3, 2024, at the Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage of Carnegie Hall.
The program will provide a wonderful array of compositions:
«rewind« by British, Grammy-nominated composer Anna Clyne, who is in demand at the highest level across the globe and was named by Bachtrack as “one of the top ten most performed contemporary composers in the world”;
A selection of Nikos Skalkottas’ Greek Dances, which premiered at Carnegie Hall exactly 70 years earlier, in November 1954, with Dimitri Mitropoulos and the New York Philharmonic;
Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Symphonic Dances, a composition based on themes from the musical West Side Story. Inspired by Shakespeare's play “Romeo and Juliet”, the story is set in the mid-20th century, in a multiracial, working-class neighborhood in New York City.
During their stay in New York City, the musicians of the GYSO will also visit the recently constructed Saint Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church and National Shrine in Manhattan.
The GYSO is an Orchestra in Residence at Megaron – the Athens Concert Hall and represents Greece in the European Federation of National Youth Orchestras. Over recent years, 300 young musicians (ages 18-26) from 46 cities in Greece and abroad have been selected to participate in its concerts and educational activities.
The appearance of the GYSO at Carnegie Hall marks another milestone in the orchestra’s highly successful trajectory. In August 2023, the orchestra was invited for the second time to perform at the Konzerthaus Berlin, for the opening concert of the international Young Euro Classic festival.
In his article published in “Tagesspiegel” newspaper, critic Frederik Hanssen states that “It is precisely this fire that blazes in the hearts of the young talents, and Dionysis Grammenos knows how to unleash it in such a way that the music literally jumps at the audience [...] Even in Brahms’ complex ‘First’, the musicians always know exactly where the music is heading and what holds it together at its core [...] Beautiful sound and concentration unite here with unconditional devotion to an interpretive intensity rarely heard in the works of the romantic composer from Hamburg”.
Conductor Dionysis Grammenos recently made his debut with the London Philharmonic Orchestra at Megaron – the Athens Concert Hall, as well as with the Ulster Orchestra, with soloist Mahan Esfahani, in a concert broadcast by BBC Radio 3. Notable recent appearances include those with the Belgian National Orchestra, the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec, the Cameristi della Scala, and with soloists Khatia Buniatishvili and Renaud Capucon, among others. He has served as principal conductor of the English Touring Opera for their production of Puccini’s La Bohème, which received widespread critical acclaim, and has also conducted the Royal Northern Sinfonia in Rossini’s La Cenerentola. In May 2024 he will conduct the RTE Concert Orchestra in Dublin, and in July of the same year he will make his debut with the Houston Symphony Orchestra.