Ashokan Farewell - Jenny Oaks Baker & Lyceum Philharmonic

Make music with Jenny and the Lyceum Concert Orchestra at Lyceum Music Festival Youth this summer! https://www.lyceummusicfestivalyouth.... we are playing this piece! LMFY is open to students 7 to 17 and is also the home of Jenny's 2019 Violin Workshop.

Want to be a part of the Lyceum Family at American Heritage School? JOIN US! Lyceum Orchestra Program has openings in its six orchestras for youth ages 5-18 in the Utah area and hosts an amazing week-long music camp at Zion National Park each summer. American Heritage School provides a world-class education emphasizing faith, scholarship, and liberty for those in Utah and offers a convenient, spiritual and secular online homeschool experience. GET INVOLVED!
Lyceum Orchestra Program (K-12) -- http://lyceumorchestras.org/
Lyceum Music Festival (ages 14-21) -- https://lyceummusicfestival.com/
Lyceum Music Festival Youth (ages 7-17) -- https://www.lyceummusicfestivalyouth....
American Heritage School (K-12) -- http://www.american-heritage.org/
The Family School Online (K-12) -- https://thefamilyschoolonline.org/

The Backstory: Ashokan Farewell is one of THE MOST beautiful pieces for violin ever written, but our serious violinists hardly ever play it because it’s so plain. We asked Kurt Bestor to fancy it up for us in what we hope will be the new definitive version of this piece. The full symphonic treatment adds so much and the runs, pedal tone variations, and gorgeous key change really take Jay Ungar’s perfect melody to a new level. After three days of recording our Simple Gifts CD, we retreated to the big lodge pictured in the background of the video. All 100 students slept overnight in the lodge with the girls upstairs in bunks and all the guys downstairs on the floor with air mattresses. It was one of those classic orchestra bonding experiences. We played games and ate too much food. Random games of pool and ping-pong went nonstop and the out of tune piano in the front room was playing anything but classical music. The next morning Jenny and the video crew arrived but it was WAY too cold to film. The week before we had scouted this beautiful meadow with brightly colored autumn leaves, but in the meantime a storm had blown all the leaves off the trees and none of us wanted to leave the warmth of the cabin for very long. So we set up the chairs and stands as close to the cabin as we could and chose this picturesque field – which usually has volleyball standards on it. Believe it or not, we did the whole video in about three takes. We would run out of the cabin into the freezing air and record one take then retreat back to the big fireplace. It was one of our most memorable film shoots. The end result, with Sullivan Ballou’s letter added in, is simply moving. It’s education AND inspiration. That’s what our music is all about.

For the full Sullivan Ballou letter see: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sulliva...

Music arr. by Kurt Bestor
Music conducted an produced by Kayson Brown
Orchestra: Lyceum Philharmonic at American Heritage School
Violin Soloist: Jenny Oaks Baker
Audio recorded by Bennett Jensen and mixed by Richard Duke

Video Production by Dave Buer and ARK Studios Media Group, LLC
Email: [email protected]
Website: www.arkstudiosmediagroup.com

Special Thanks to the BYU Timp Lodge -- what a beautiful location! That's Mt. Timpanogos in the background. The setting was just magnificent. This location is not far from where we filmed our Jupiter video    • Jupiter Theme / God Beyond All Praisi...  

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