Playing from the HEART

When the Athens Youth Symphony orchestra closed operations in 2023, Athens was left without a medium for young musicians to play with others outside of school. That was until the local non-profit HEART (Helping East Athens Rise Through) Music group announced their own youth symphony orchestra. Before the youth symphony, the main operation of HEART was sending professional musicians into Clarke County schools to make high level music education accessible for all students.

“In the fall of 2019, my daughter was going to Hilsman, and their band director knew that I played flute and asked me to start helping out. That’s when my dad was like, ‘hey, this could be it, you could just have teachers coming into the school during the school day and do the teaching right then and there,’” HEART founder Natalie Smith said.

HEART’s in-classroom music lessons help music educators in Athens teach more specific or complex skills. 

“HEART teachers would come in and do individual instruction with students or small group sectionals, and it made such a huge difference in our ability to play more challenging music and reach the next level of performance techniques. So when I heard that they were creating the Youth Symphony and invited me to be a conductor, I was very excited to do so,” Clarke Central orchestra teacher and HEART Youth Symphony Director Eunice Kang said.

When the Athens Youth Symphony unexpectedly closed, there was a need for a new youth orchestra. 

I don’t have the details about that, but they stopped their operations. There was no community orchestra for youth, so there was a hole here,” Smith said.

One of the early challenges that HEART faced with founding the youth symphony was making sure that they wouldn’t be starting up at the same time as other local organizations.

“We didn’t know what happened with the Athens Youth Symphony, and we were having trouble figuring out if they were going to come back. Then there were some people in the county who were saying, ‘hey, no, we wanted to start our own.’ So we had to say, ‘we understand that, and we would love to partner with you, but until you do we’re just going to go ahead and do the thing,’” Smith said.

There was also trouble with finding a place to hold weekly practices that was within the youth symphony’s budget.

“We were hoping to use Clarke County schools, just like we do for teaching in the same space, and to use it on the weekend. There are other organizations like the Classic City Band which uses the band room at Cedar on Tuesday evenings, but they had to charge a lot of fees, for custodians and all that, which makes sense. It just ended up not working with our budget. Thankfully, somebody knew a preacher at First Baptist Church,” Smith said.

As HEART struggled to get established, advertising fell somewhat short.

“This is their first year, and they rolled it out at the end of last year. I love them, but they rolled it out at a time that it was hard to convince even the finest students in the land. It was May, and we were like, ‘hey, make an audition tape and do extra work.’ It was a hard sell. I’m hoping it will have a few more (participants) next year,” Cedar Shoals orchestra teacher Rebecca Floyd said.

HEART Youth Symphony started holding rehearsals in September of 2024 and has met on Sundays since then. The program gives students who are passionate about orchestra the opportunity to simply play and perform with other students without the pressure of a grade.

“There’s only so much you can do in school. There’s a lot of standards that the teachers have to meet and there’s a lot of other stuff that happens in school, besides just getting to play music. Also there’s a community. They are playing with other people from Oconee County or from whatever surrounding counties are coming in,” Smith said.

This youth symphony is also the only opportunity for surrounding students outside of Clarke County to practice in an orchestra.

“None of the surrounding counties teach orchestra in school. So they have a band but none of the surrounding counties have an outlet to play with other people,” Smith said.

Cedar sophomore and HEART Youth Symphony violinist Boone Patterson enjoys the opportunity to play with new students other than his classmates.

“Even when they don’t have orchestra classes, there’s a lot of Oconee students who still try to learn these instruments on their own,” Patterson said.

While school orchestras vary greatly in skill, youth symphony allows higher-skilled young musicians a chance to play with others on a similar level. 

“Think about if you were the best swimmer at your school, but your school didn’t have a swim team. It was kind of that situation for a lot of kids. So if you’re really good at a string instrument, and you want to be surrounded by other people who are really good, people who are dedicated to it,” HEART Music board member Megan Williams said.

Patterson finds that aspect of the program valuable, as the skill level offered in school isn’t always suitable for more advanced students.

“With school, there’s a grade level system for the difficulty of the pieces, and a lot of the time we have to conform to those grade levels because there’s too varied of a skill level in the class. So a lot of the time, the more enjoyable and well known music, we kind of have to swap out for easier music that people don’t know about,” Patterson said.

The youth symphony recruits highly experienced orchestra students as well as students looking to improve their musical skills — even band players.

“If you’re the best one at your school, it gives you the opportunity to be in a group made up of the best ones. If you’re not the best one at your school, it gives you an opportunity to mix it up and play with different people at different levels. If you are in the band at your school, it gives you a chance to play with strings and winds, or if you’re in the orchestra and you’ve never played with winds,” Floyd said.

The HEART Youth Symphony directors and founders are looking to expand to better serve all young musicians.

“I would like to get more winds involved, because it’s really fun to play with a full symphony orchestra, which is strings and winds,” Smith said.

There are also plans to offer two different symphony orchestras, one for younger students and one for older, more experienced students. The HEART youth symphony is currently open to 8-12th graders, mainly.

“The ultimate goal would be to have two ensembles, one that’s at a higher level, that’s more for high school students, and then one that’s at more of a middle school level. That’s the model for the group that I manage here in Atlanta, and it works really well,” Williams said.