January 30, 2024

Carnegie Hall Announces World Orchestra Week

Carnegie Hall today announced a new summer concert festival— World Orchestra Week (WOW!), a celebration of international youth orchestras—scheduled to take place this August 2024. Inspired by the Hall’s three critically acclaimed national youth ensembles—the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America (NYO-USA), NYO2, and NYO Jazz—this ambitious international initiative brings five youth orchestras from Africa, Asia, Europe, and Latin America to New York City for high-level music making with some of today’s most internationally-renowned artists plus cultural exchange activities among the orchestras over the course of one week.

The five ensembles featured in the 2024 festival include: the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela, the Africa United Youth Orchestra, the Beijing Youth Symphony Orchestra, the European Union Youth Orchestra, and the Afghan Youth Orchestra. These five orchestras, along with Carnegie Hall’s National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America and NYO2, will each perform in Carnegie Hall’s Stern Auditorium / Perelman Stage from August 1–7, 2024. In addition to public performances at Carnegie Hall, the community of more than 700 young musicians from around the globe will take part in their own cultural exchange and communal music-making experiences throughout the week, including a massive play-in event to include all festival participants. Musicians participating in World Orchestra Week will be housed at New York University, a key partner in the program.

The next day, Friday, August 2 at 7:00 p.m., Gustavo Dudamel leads the National Children’s Symphony of Venezuela in a program to include John Adams’s Short Ride in a Fast Machine along with Latin American classics Mediodía en el llano (Midday on the Plains) by Estevez, and Ginastera’s Four Dances from Estancia, which the orchestra performed in its unforgettable international debut at the Salzburg Festival. The second half of the concert is anchored by Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. The orchestra is comprised of talented young musicians, ages 10–17, who take part in Venezuela’s El Sistema program.

For more information, visit: www.carnegiehall.org/Events/World-Orchestra-Week