A Global Fellowship Meets a New York Institution: TŌN’s Fall Visits to All-City Orchestra
This fall, TŌN musicians made several trips into New York City, working directly with the All-City High School Orchestra ahead of a side-by-side concert on Sunday, December 21 at the Julia Richman Educational Complex. The visits followed a consistent shape: TŌN musicians ran sectionals with individual sections of the orchestra, then sat side-by-side with the high school students in full rehearsal—trading the coaching seat for the stand partner’s seat.
To understand why this partnership matters, it helps to know who’s actually in the room.
All-City is not a new or small program. It’s part of the All-City High School Music Program, a New York City Department of Education initiative established in 1936—nearly 90 years old, and one of the longest-running youth music programs in the country. It’s free, audition-based, and draws top student-musicians from public high schools across all five boroughs into a single ensemble that rehearses together on Saturdays throughout the school year. The orchestra has been led since 2022 by principal conductor David West, who also directs orchestras and chamber music at Celia Cruz High School of Music and founded the Bronx Orchestra Festival. For many students, All-City is their first time playing in a full orchestra alongside peers from parts of the city they’ve never set foot in.
TŌN musicians arrive from somewhere further still. TŌN is a graduate program founded at Bard College in 2015, and its members are hand-picked from conservatories around the world—recent seasons have included musicians from the United States, Austria, Brazil, China, Colombia, France, Hungary, Mongolia, South Korea, and more, spanning more than a dozen countries in total. Many are training for orchestral careers far from home themselves, on full-tuition fellowships that combine performance with real teaching experience.
The exchange runs in both directions. Alongside the visits into New York City, All-City students also travel up to Bard for a weekend of their own, rehearsing side-by-side with the full TŌN orchestra in the Fisher Center, joining an open rehearsal, and touring the campus, before returning to New York to prepare for their own performance. It’s a lot for a group of NYC public school students: a long bus ride, an unfamiliar campus, and suddenly a seat inside a much bigger, much more experienced orchestra.
In Their Own Words
Surveyed afterward about what stuck with them, All-City students truly captured the essence of the exchange, which is exactly what makes their answers worth reading:
“Seeing people in the process of stepping into the professional music world was definitely an eye opener to me. It gave me enthusiasm and motivation for what I do, which I will cherish for a long time.”
“I learned that as a section leader, making large movements can help with cuing the rest of the section and making the section be more cohesive and perform as one unit.”
“I learned so much from my stand partner. He nuanced parts of our pieces that I never noticed before, and I learned a lot about style and bowing. It was also awesome to hear such a large orchestra, especially the percussion.”
“It was my first long trip away from New York City. Very memorable.”
“Playing with TŌN was absolutely incredible. I felt like I was part of something so much bigger. Watching how focused and passionate the musicians were made me want to push myself even harder.”
That’s the exchange in miniature: a nearly 90-year-old New York City institution built to give public school kids from every borough real ensemble experience, meeting a graduate orchestra whose members were, not long ago, students themselves, just on different continents. All-City students get to rehearse beside musicians already living the professional path many of them are aiming for. TŌN musicians get to build the teaching-artist skills that will matter for the rest of their careers.
All of it builds toward December 21, when All-City joins TŌN on stage for a side-by-side performance following the New York premiere of a concerto written for Venezuelan trumpet virtuoso Pacho Flores. But by then, the real work—the sectionals, the shared stands, the long bus ride to Bard—will already be behind them.
Photo by Karl Rabe