Since its inception in 2014, the Safaricom Youth Orchestra has been playing a crucial role in instilling the necessary skills and discipline in the next generation of Kenya’s professional musicians.
As the 2022-2023 cohort graduated last Sunday, we witnessed beautiful performances from the orchestra with a culmination of a stunning performance from the legendary Them Mushrooms who are celebrating 50 years in the music industry & the graduation of 16 talented members who have been working tirelessly throughout the season.
Tremendous growth
I’ve been privileged to see a couple of performances from the SYO members; including acts at the Safaricom International Jazz Festival and even attended some of their practice sessions, but this season was quite something.
The SYO members continued to face the challenge of not being able to regularly attend their rehearsal sessions, which usually happen on Saturdays during a particular season, due to the pandemic, but their stunning Sunday performance showed just how remarkable and passionate the students are and how much they’ve excelled both as individuals and as a team.
Speaking to Philip Maina, a clarinet tutor who has been with the Safaricom Yoith Orchestra since it’s inception, expressed how much he was impressed with the growth of the students since practicing from home to coming together to rehearse as a team to performing in front of hundreds of people during the graduation on Sunday.
“It was a bit rocky at first because of the social distancing. It was a very foreign concept and it took us a bit of time to adjust but I was really surprised by how the students, especially the younger ones, and how they adjusted to the different conditions and how they still had the drive and the passion to practice despite what was going on around them.”
He added, “Its been exciting to see the growth of the students both at an individual level and as an orchestra and its great to see Safaricom doing projects like the Safaricom Youth Orchestra that impacts people across the board. It’s about changing people’s lives and every single young person who’s gone through this project has had their lives changed in different ways.”
Bernadette Muthoni, a violin tutor, also expressed her excitement about the SYO graduation. She says that although she joined during the pandemic in November 2021 when the students were immersing themselves into virtual rehearsals, she is quite pleased with how the students quickly adjusted back to rehearsing physically.
“Let’s face it, members of an orchestra are meant to rehearse as a team. This not only makes the music beautiful, they also need to collectively learn the conductor’s directives and play together in harmony.”
“At first, we had a huge challenge in rehearsing online. First, it’s a Saturday and you know there’s that want to sleep in. Second, there were issues with trying to co-ordinate the students plus you can’t really identify which student is weak in a particular section so as a tutor, it was challenging for some students to keep up because they’re all at different paces and for us tutors to make sure that whatever we set out to teach that day was effectively grasped.”
However, the students were impeccable! They exceeded our expectations despite us being nervous about us coming back together with our individual sectional pieces and also as a team and I’m proud to be associated with them.”
An honorable mention is how the orchestra was privileged to work with the legendary Them Mushrooms since late last year and we had the honor of watching them perform classics like Nyambura and Zilizopendwa as they celebrate their 50th year anniversary.
