Violinist Kevin Yu, a Herricks High School senior, will be taking a trip he never expected to go on this summer as the only Long Island student selected for the inaugural international concert tour of the 2013 National Youth Orchestra of the U.S.
“I was thoroughly surprised,” Yu said. “I’ve done well in competitions but the NYO I never expected.”
Yu will be one of 120 musicians to participate in the youth orchestra’s inaugural tour to Washington, D.C., London, St. Petersburg and Moscow after a two-week training residency at SUNY Purchase. The orchestra is sponsored by Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute.
Yu’s father, Zen, told him about the orchestra and encouraged him to submit an audition recording, something Yu might not otherwise have done.
“Frankly, I don’t have a lot of confidence,” the soft-spoken violinist said.
Recording the audition – 10 minutes of excerpts from pieces by Mendelssohn, Mozart and Bartok – turned into a much larger undertaking than Yu expected.
Yu recorded 50 takes in the living room of his family’s house with his father, a violin teacher trained at the Shanghai Conservatory, listening to him.
“He just criticized me through the whole process,” Yu recalled. “After the 40th take, it got kind of tedious.”
Yu said his father, who has been his violin teacher since he was seven years old, was elated at the news that his son had made the cut.
For Yu, the summer youth orchestra tour is the culmination of a musical journey that began with his parents insisting that he practice two hours a day from an early age, a regimen he appreciates in retrospect.
“It’s important to practice more when you’re younger to get the foundation,” Yu said.
Now the experience of playing the violin has become a fulfilling avocation he thoroughly enjoys.
“Violin is a really good way of showing passion through music. There’s a wider range of notes. You can play beautifully or aggressively. It just calms my soul,” Yu said.
When Yu prepares to play a particularly piece, he said he watches videos of professional musicians playing the piece first to learn what the composer intended. Then he works out his own approach.
”I find my own interpretation,” he said.
Yu is a member of the New York Youth Symphony and plays in the Herricks Chamber Orchestra. He was concertmaster of the string orchestra at the New York State School Music Association All-State Conference last fall and earned second place in the Long Island Symphony Orchestra’s 2012 Young Performers Competition.
These days, he said, he practices one hour each day. He learned to play piano when he was younger under the tutelage of his mother, Wen Shing Yu, who teaches privately. But, he said, he just concentrates on the violin now.
Yu said he considering pursuing a music minor when he starts attending Columbia University next fall. But his major field of study will be in applied mathematics.
“I really like the idea of applying math in the real world and solving problems,” he said.
Yu is a member of the Mathletes team at Herricks and the Chinese Culture Club. And for the past two summers, he has taught younger music students as a volunteer in the annual Herricks summer music camp.
