CLEVELAND, OH – Contemporary Youth Orchestra will perform POWER UP! Epic Video Game Music on March 12, 2016 at 7pm at Cleveland State University’s Waetjen Auditorium. The organization has also been conducting music education workshops in classrooms around Northeast Ohio as part of its program to educate under-served youth in Northeast Ohio.
CYO’s annual Music and its Industry series is currently in its tenth year. In the past, the focus has been Broadway music, movie scoring, and songwriting. This year, the program will focus on past and future video game music.
The performance will include popular works from Super Mario Brothers, Angry Birds, Final Fantasy, World of Warcraft, Zelda, Pokemon, Halo, and many more. The pieces will be performed with video and live game play.
Music Director Liza Grossman explains how this year’s theme was chosen, “Video games are filled with fantasy and require logic, memory, and quick reaction from both mind and body to fulfill goals. The music gives the experience more depth and really creates the atmosphere of each game. It can be light and fun, like Mario Brothers, or deep and foreboding, like Final Fantasy.”
The March 12th performance is being produced alongside Neoglyphic Entertainment, who will premiere music from its upcoming anticipated video game Sunborn Rising during the performance.
Additionally, the performance is part of the 3 rd year of NEOSonicFest, a festival showcasing Cleveland’s new music and presented by Cleveland Chamber Festival.
Along with a performance, complimentary workshops are also being performed at local under-served schools in Lorain County and Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Since this programs inception ten years ago, it has positively affected over 6,000 local area elementary and middle school students.
The workshops are performed at no cost to the school districts and completely funded through CYO’s grant program through the Nordson Foundation and The Martha Holden Jennings Foundation.
The orchestra has enlisted the knowledge and skills of Cleveland music educators, including Robin Pease to conduct the workshops. Each classroom of students engages in a three-day workshop where the students are exposed to various components of the music industry and its processes. The educators walk the students through the process and help them produce a professional video to conclude the workshops.
The classrooms also attend a matinee performance of CYO’s show on March 11, 2016.
Contemporary Youth Orchestra is also performing a show with Styx front man Tommy Shaw on May 27, 2016 and at inaugural year of Laurelive in June.
Contemporary Youth Orchestra is the first and only youth orchestra in the country dedicated to the study and performance of contemporary orchestral literature. CYO was founded in 1995, is currently in its 21st season and is in residence at Cleveland State University. CYO is composed of 115 students from 64 Northeast Ohio school districts.
Tickets for POWER UP! Are available at cyorchestra.org