By Khalida Sarwari
She’d probably never tell you herself, but Helen Wu is having a better summer than you. In what’s shaping up to be one of those once-in-a-lifetime kind of summers, the Harker student just completed a two-week national tour where she played in some of the best concert halls in the country.
Helen, a 17-year-old Saratoga resident who plays the violin in the Harker School orchestra, chamber ensemble and string quartet, was selected to tour with the Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the USA from July 20 to Aug. 4 with 119 other musicians–all ages 16-19–hailing from 35 states plus the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico.
She was selected following a comprehensive audition process that involved making and sending a video of a solo piece as well as a concerto, samples of a few orchestral excerpts, a biographical essay and letters of recommendation.
Helen and the other musicians first gathered for a two-week intensive training residency at Purchase College, State University of New York, where they rehearsed for three hours a day with players from some of the country’s best professional orchestras.
The eight-city tour started at the Performing Arts Center in Purchase, N.Y., followed by the orchestra’s Carnegie Hall debut in New York City and continuing with appearances at Ozawa Hall in Lenox, Mass., Schaefer Center for the Performing Arts in Boone, N.C., the Jay Pritzker Pavilion in Chicago, Ill., Walk Festival Hall in Teton Village, Wyo., Weill Hall at Sonoma State University’s Green Music Center in Rohnert Park and culminating at the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.
At these halls, they performed such pieces as Leonard Bernstein’s Symphonic Dances from West Side Story, Benjamin Britten’s Violin Concerto featuring Shaham, Ravel’s arrangement of Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” and the premiere of a new work from composer Samuel Carl Adams, commissioned by Carnegie Hall especially for NYO-USA. The orchestra was led by St. Louis Symphony music director David Robertson and featured violinist Gil Shaham.
Helen chose Carnegie Hall–where she and her fellow musicians received a standing ovation from a sold-out crowd–and the Walt Disney Concert Hall as two of her favorite venues. Her most memorable performance, however, was her first concert with the orchestra at Purchase.
“It was the first time we played together as a unit,” she said. “There’s just something that welled up in me, and I almost broke down crying. We were just making such beautiful music together.”
She didn’t hold back the tears in L.A. Knowing that it was their last concert and the end of the tour, Helen was not the only one who became emotional.
“We wanted to give our all to our performance. and we definitely did,” she said. “Knowing it was the last time was a different level of amazing. It was unreal.”
Helen, who is also a member of the California Youth Symphony, had just enough time to shuffle some things around in her suitcase after wrapping up a tour of Eastern Europe with the CYS at the end of June.
“I’m just really grateful that I’ve had all these opportunities,” she said a mere couple of days after returning from her latest tour.
Lest anyone thinks Helen’s making a bid for the title of the next rock star of classical music, it is worth noting music is only one part of Helen’s future aspirations. She plans to study neuroscience after her senior year at Harker.
“It’s hard to say, but right now I’m really interested in life sciences and music, so I’m not sure what I’ll be majoring in or if I want to do a double degree or something, but definitely both of those will play a huge role in my college life no matter what I choose,” Helen said.
Though she took both piano and violin lessons as a child, she said she came to prefer the violin as she got older, because “playing in an orchestra made the violin come alive for me.” Regardless of what her future holds, Helen can look back on the summer of 2014 and recall the magic she created with her favorite instrument on some of the most famous stages in the world.
This summer marked the second NYO-USA tour. Created by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the program recognizes the finest young players across the country by bringing them together for a summer tour. The 2014 roster also included Cupertino residents Janice Gho and Adrian Lin.
For those with aspirations of joining the 2015 tour, there’s no better time to buy a Mandarin-English dictionary. Next year’s tour is scheduled to take place in China.
To learn more about NYO-USA, visit carnegiehall.org/nyousa.
