Youth Engagement – Chapter 5: Partnerships

Gaining the trust of local young people, learning about their needs, and responding to their interests with relevant programmatic offerings is work that is often best achieved in partnership with schools and other youth-serving organizations.

“The biggest piece for orchestras is the partnership piece,” says Gary Padmore at the New York Philharmonic. “Oftentimes we position ourselves to be the solution for the community. The solution actually lives within the community. We just need to figure out a way to use our platform to amplify those solutions. If we’re not bringing in the collective, we’re bringing back the savior image.”

The Detroit Symphony Orchestra is a prolific partner. Karisa Antonio pegs at 84 the number of DSO partners creating opportunities for youth. These include the Motown Museum for students who are interested in voice training, and Michigan State University’s Community Music School-Detroit for those wanting private lessons. Detroit Suzuki, Crescendo Detroit, Sphinx, Living Arts, and many other organizations in Detroit team up to make musical development pathways possible. The DSO works with a broad sector of youth-focused partners beyond music, including the Neutral Zone, Downtown Boxing Gym, the Robotics Team at Detroit Cristo Rey High School, and many others.

Then there are partners in “invisible communities” like those that the Seattle Symphony is serving such as the incarcerated and the unhoused, many of whom are young people. Lorin Green, Community Relations Manager in Seattle and a member of the League’s Student Leadership Council, describes partnership work as listening first. “We’re humans, so sometimes it starts with the basic connection of who I am and who they are, and who are their staff people. We want to hear what you want to do. We have limits of course—that’s a challenge of being a large cultural organization. We have to be clear from the start about what we have to offer.”

Houston Youth Symphony partners with the wind quintet WindSync specifically for its El Sistema-inspired Coda afterschool strings program. The partnership was presented in a 2024 League Conference session. HYS Debut String Orchestra Conductor and Coda Music Program Director Jackson Guillen arranges culturally relevant music, including new commissions, for Coda’s beginning string players to perform alongside WindSync’s professional winds. Coda students and families get to experience exciting, full orchestral sound, deepening their enthusiasm for music learning.

The ensembles of Title I schools in and around Palm Beach, FL, get prime performance real estate when the Palm Beach Symphony presents them in its lobby before every orchestra concert. The ensembles perform on a spectacular landing in the multi-level lobby, with good sound system support, and get professional photographs taken. “Then the students and families as well as their music directors are guests at our concert,” explains Bryce Seliger, Education and Programming Associate. “It helps encourage family support for lessons.”

The South Dakota Symphony Orchestra’s Music Composition Academy, described in Chapter 2, grows out of its Lakota Music Project, a partnership project of over 20 years. At the core are tribal elders, educators, and especially musicians. SDSO musicians, the Creekside Singers, and the Dakota cedar flutist Bryan Akipa listen to each other play, jam together, and then perform side by side, as well as together in commissioned works. Says Jennifer Teisinger, “the trust building necessary for these programs to be impactful takes time, diligence, and consistency. When utilizing music as a cultural bridge builder, start first with the relationships. Build trust with the people you want to make music with. Why would they want to make music with you? Then, the music making comes out of the relationship.” 

“The work of inclusion requires that we descend from our pedestals and go into the communities that we say we want to impact and teach youngsters the music that we play and thereby give them an appreciation for our art. This is not achieved by simply bringing youngsters from an underserved community into our concert halls and playing a concert for them that they neither understand nor appreciate. Rather, it is achieved by starting a violin class in the social hall of the local church in the community where these kids live, and by putting violins in their hands and teaching them how to play. If we really want someone Black in our orchestra or on our board in the future, we need to go into the communities where Black people live and get some Black kids engaged in what we do. Maybe twenty years from now, one of those youngsters will serve as our Board Chair, and maybe then we can say with authenticity that the Symphony has a genuine relationship with the Black community. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time and congratulating ourselves for what is really thoroughly ineffective EDI work.”

Charles Dickerson, Founder, Executive Director, and Conductor, Inner City Youth Orchestra of Los Angeles

Photo: Local student ensembles regularly animate the lobby of Dreyfoos Hall, home to the Palm Beach Symphony. Here, a pre-concert performance features the Alexander W. Dreyfoos School of the Arts Strings Chamber Ensemble, with Orchestra Director Jeffrey Adkins. Credit: IndieHouse Films