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AFA (American Festival for the Arts) Conservatory Orchestra

Presented by American Festival for the Arts at University of Houston - Moores Opera House

June 27, 2009

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AFA Conductor-in-Residence Barbara Scowcroft leads the AFA (American Festival for the Arts) Conservatory Orchestra in their first performance of the season, performing Prokofiev's Lieutenant Kije Symphony Suite and Antonin Dvorak's Symphony No. 6 in D Major. Violin soloist Ralph Matson (Concertmaster, Utah Symphony) will be featured with the Orchestra in a performance of the Danse Macabre by Camille Saint-Saens.

Students in the AFA Orchestra/Chamber Music program are talented 9th through 12th grade instrumentalists from around the Houston area and participate in a five week intensive curriculum of orchestra, chamber music, private lessons and music theory, history and elective classes.

American Festival for the Arts (AFA) was founded in 1993 by Houston composer J. Todd Frazier to provide accessible, high-quality music education and performance opportunities for youth and to broaden the audience for both new American works and the standard classical music repertory.

To achieve its mission, AFA presents an annual Summer Music Conservatory and Concert Series. This unique and acclaimed community-based music education program, featuring faculty members drawn from the nations’ finest educators, performers, composers and conductors, has become recognized as an important annual event in the cultural life of Southeast Texas and as a model for similar programs around the nation. A rigorous curriculum that includes large and small ensemble performance, music theory/enrichment classes and private lessons forms the core of AFA’s orchestra, jazz, choir, piano and composition departments.

The Conservatory is an inspiring, life changing experience for its students. In 2008, AFA’s thirteenth Summer Music Conservatory enrolled 332 students from 109 elementary, middle and senior high schools. AFA presented twenty-one free concerts to thousands of area music lovers featuring more American works and world premieres than any other area presenter. More than three out of every five students received tuition assistance from the AFA Scholarship Enrichment Fund.