YOA Orchestra of the Americas

YOA Orchestra of the Americas
Orchestra
Cuban Orchestra Member
Founded	2001
Location	The Americas
Principal conductor	Carlos Miguel Prieto
Website	yoa.org

Guided by Artistic Advisor Plácido Domingo, YOA Orchestra of the Americas is a Latin Grammy Winning world-class symphony orchestra of gifted musical leaders, ages 18 to 30, representing more than 25 countries in the Western Hemisphere.

Founded in 2001 by the New England Conservatory and VISIÓN Inc., YOA Orchestra of the Americas was inspired by the National System of Youth and Children’s Orchestras of Venezuela (also known as El Sistema). YOA was established by founding chairman Hilda Ochoa-Brillembourg, founding vice-chairman José Antonio Abreu, and founding vice-chairman Mark Churchill, together with support from the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies at Harvard University, the Organization of American States, and the Inter-American Development Bank. Since its inaugural tour, YOA has performed more than 350 concerts for audiences in more than 30 countries throughout the Americas, Europe, and Asia. The orchestra has reached over 12 million people through television & radio broadcasts, recordings, print, and television - including three feature-length documentary films dedicated to YOA [1]. The orchestra has recorded a number of critically acclaimed and commercially available CDs and DVDs with Plácido Domingo, Gabriela Montero, Philip Glass, among others.

Plácido Domingo serves as YOA's Artistic Advisor and Carlos Miguel Prieto acts as Music Director. Gustavo Dudamel co-led YOA as Principal Conductor from 2003-2010. Guest conductors include Lorin Maazel, Valery Gergiev, Kent Nagano, Leonard Slatkin, Rafael Payare, Helmuth Rilling, Isaac Karabtchevsky, and José Serebrier. Guest soloists include Yo-Yo Ma, Joshua Bell, Sarah Chang, Vadim Repin, Julian Rachlin, Nelson Freire, Alisa Weilerstein, Louis Lortie, Ingrid Fliter, James Ehnes, Gabriela Montero, Paquito d'Rivera, Antonio Meneses, Matt Haimovitz, Ildar Abdrazakov, Mariachi Vargas, Danilo Perez, Horacio Lavandera, Ilya Gringolts, Philippe Quint, Alex Klein, among others. YOA's instrumental coaching faculty includes members of the world's top orchestras, among them principals of the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra, San Francisco Symphony, Chicago Symphony, New York Philharmonic, Montreal Symphony, Boston Symphony, Rome Opera, Brussels Philharmonic, Cleveland Orchestra, Philadelphia Orchestra, Toronto Symphony, Royal Philharmonic, London Symphony Orchestra, as well as academic music institutions of high repute including The Juilliard School, The Curtis Institute of Music, The Colburn School, and Shepherd School of Music. YOA's Head of Faculty since 2006 has been Argentine violinist Leon Spierer who led the Berlin Philharmonic as Concertmaster from 1963 to 1993 under Herbert von Karajan. Composers-in-Residence to work with YOA on tour include Philip Glass (2010), Tan Dun (2013), Arturo Marquez (2014), Nicolas Gilbert (2015), John Estacio (2009), and Juan Orrego-Salas (2012).