By Daniel Buckwalter
(#CommonManAtTheSymphony)

The colors on the stage were a little startling to see — happily so, I might add.

Yes, members of the Eugene Symphony Orchestra were wearing their traditional black. The 50-plus members of Eugene Springfield Youth Orchestra, on the other hand (and all of them looking sharp), were on stage in a splash of colors.

Together they performed the Side x Side concert on Nov. 9 in the Hult Center’s Silva Concert Hall, in front of a good-size and appreciative audience. The music making was first rate, and Cynthia Stenger Riplinger, ESYO’s executive director, hopes the young players — the vast majority of them in high school — treasured the rehearsal time and the performance on the large Silva Concert Hall stage.

“It’s a big deal,” she told Eugene Scene a couple of days before the performance. “It’s a valuable thing that they may not get yet.”

Led by Alex Prior, Eugene Symphony’s artistic director and conductor, the roughly one-hour concert included Ludwig van Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture and the first movement of Felix Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor, with Kaylee Nah as the featured soloist.

Nah, a junior at Beaverton’s Sunset High School, was delicately expressive, technically sound, and in full command during her performance. She received a standing ovation, with Prior leading the applause.

Edward Elgar’s Nimrod from Enigma Variations followed, and the concert concluded with the intricate and stirring final movement to Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 5,
all of it well done. And, Stenger Riplinger hopes, all of it will stay with the young musicians through the early stages of possible music careers.

“They’re gaining tips,” she says, adding that through observation, the young musicians would absorb the respect and attention to detail of the section leaders.

Also, “Working with a different director is a wonderful experience,” she says. EYSO is led on the podium by David Jacobs, an instructor and conductor at the University of Oregon’s School of Music and Dance.

“They have distinctly different personalities,” Stenger Riplinger says. Jacobs, she notes, is “understated” on the podium, while Prior conducts with “flourish.”

ESYO has partnerships with the Oregon Mozart Players and Eugene Opera. Stenger Riplinger explains that Dave Moss, Eugene Symphony’s executive director, reached out to her last year about the Side x Side project.

“Everyone I’ve talked to believes this is the first time we’ve done this with the Eugene Symphony,” Stenger Riplinger says.

Here’s hoping it’s not the last time.