St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra Season Opener

The St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra opens its new season at Powell Hall on Sunday, Nov 22, at 3 PM. It's their first concert of the year, and the program pulls from three different traditions: Grażyna Bacewicz's Overture kicks things off, followed by Edvard Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite No. 1, and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade closes it out. That's a wide spread for one afternoon—a Polish overture, a Norwegian suite, and a Russian tone poem.

If you're not familiar with the group, the Youth Orchestra is the region's premier student ensemble. It's an auditioned orchestra of around 100 musicians, ages 12 to 22, drawn from across the St. Louis area and beyond. It was founded in 1970 by SLSO Conductor Laureate Leonard Slatkin and has since turned out more than 2,000 alumni, many of whom went on to make music their career. Since 2024, the YO has been led by Samuel Hollister, who also serves as the Fred M. Saigh Youth Orchestra Music Director. He'll be on the podium for this opener.

The ensemble plays a handful of concerts each season at Powell Hall, and the setup there gives the young musicians a direct connection to the professional side of the house: they receive coaching from St. Louis Symphony Orchestra players and take part in the SLSO's Peer to Peer mentorship program. The Youth Orchestra's programs are presented by the Tynewald Foundation.

So, that's the lineup: Bacewicz, Grieg, and Rimsky-Korsakov, conducted by Samuel Hollister. The concert is Sunday, Nov 22, at 3 PM at Powell Hall.