ASHLAND — The Ashland Symphony Orchestra’s newest music director and conductor — Michael Repper — earned a new, prestigious title on Sunday.
Repper’s conducting of the New York Youth Symphony’s debut album during the height of the coronavirus pandemic earned a Grammy for Best Orchestral Performance.
It is the first time in Grammy history that a youth orchestra has won the award. Others nominated for the award included the Los Angeles Philharmonic, the Berliner Philharmoniker and musicians from the University of Michigan.
The Ashland Symphony Orchestra Board of Directors hired Repper in May 2022, ending the board’s two-year search for a new conductor.
The album that won the Grammy features world premiere recordings of works by Florence Price, Jessie Montgomery and Valerie Coleman. It reached #1 on the Billboard Charts and plays on the radio around the world.
Listen to it here.
Ashland is the smallest community to support a full-size professional symphony orchestra.
Martha Buckner, the symphony’s executive director, said it’s exciting to have a Grammy-winning conductor in house.
“To have somebody who is young and excited and forward thinking, it’s great,” Buckner said.
She said she looks forward to Repper continuing to build connections between the orchestra and the youth through its Youth Fan Club for students in grades 9-12, along with university students.
“He has strong feelings about what orchestras need to do in order to continue into the future,” she said.
Repper, 32, got into conducting when he was 8 years old, when he was invited on stage to be a conductor at a children’s concert. He called the experience “transformational” during a December 2022 interview on Good Morning America.
“So much of my life is because of that and because of people who have looked out for young musicians,” he said shortly after the album was nominated for the Grammy.
“This whole project is a testament to the awesome, awesome impact that young people can have when they feel empowered to give it their all. It’s a remarkable moment, not just for this orchestra, but for young musicians everywhere,” Repper said.
The album, released April 8, 2022, came out of the realities of the COVID-19 pandemic’s lockdown. Matteo Paoli, a trombone musician on the New York Youth Symphony, said in a Good Morning America interview that the symphony held one concert in March 2020 before lockdowns meant the group could no longer meet for rehearsals or performances.
Repper said the idea to record an album was born out of a desire to provide the symphony an experience they wouldn’t get during the pandemic. The conductor said recording the album itself took place over a span of four or five days in November 2020.
“It was done in groups,” he said. “Everyone had to be spread out.”
“Recording an album is a lot of work,” said Paoli. “But you put the element of covid, a virus, into all of that and it just becomes an even crazier task.”
