Two young stars will break the horizon at the Longview Area Youth Symphony Orchestra's spring concert.
Comprised of about 50 local school-aged musicians, the youth symphony is an arm of the Longview Symphony. The May 16 show will be the youth symphony's first performance from the stage at the S.E. Belcher Jr. Chapel and Performance Center at LeTourneau University.
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Les Hassell/News-Journal Photos | Pianist Sarah Jarvis, 14, began piano lessons at age 8. She will perform a challenging piece by Richard Addinsell during the spring concert at the Belcher Center.
Les Hassell/News-Journal Photos | Harpist Lydia Covey, 17, warms up Monday before rehearsal with the Longview Area Youth Symphony Orchestra. 'My dream, forever, was to play harp,' she said. 'I don't even know where I first heard a harp, but I just loved it.'
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"I'm always one that steps off a ladder and decides to go for something," pianist Sarah Jarvis, 14, said of the intimidating piece she'll perform with the orchestra backing her up.
The Warsaw Concerto by Richard Addinsell is a rich, technically challenging piano piece. It's not for the faint hearted.
"I've been working on it six months," said Sarah, daughter of Keith and Debbie Jarvis of Glenwood, north of Longview.
Sarah's start was not indicative of her future when she began piano lessons at age 8.
"My teachers didn't know if I was going to go all that far," she said. She went through two teachers in cut time, but the third proved to be the charm, and she's been studying under Longview teacher Sherrye Coles for six years. Sarah has three piano students of her own, and constantly balances her love of performing with a teaching bug.
"Usually, people pick one or the other," she said. "I'm not sure which I want to do. As I get older, those two things will be narrowed."
Sarah will share a spotlight with harpist Lydia Covey. The December graduate from Gilmer High School will be recognized for earning one of eight spots at the Interlochen Summer Music Camp in Michigan.
Ovation!, the symphony's fundraising and support guild, will present Covey a $1,000 scholarship to bolster the $1,500 award Interlochen bestowed toward tuition.
Longview Symphony Executive Director Carol Mullikin said board members and conductor Tonu Kalam also "passed the hat" to add another $1,100 gift.
Covey, 17, said she loved the harp from the first time she heard one.
"My dream, forever, was to play harp," she said. "I don't even know where I first heard a harp, but I just loved it."
Parents Bruce and Terry Covey weren't going to run out and buy their 9-year-old daughter a harp just because she thought it sounded heavenly. She took piano lessons for five years before convincing her parents to let her cross over to the harp in 2005.
The family moved from Tennessee to Upshur County about a year ago, and Covey continued her studies under Naoko Stromberg in Dallas. Her first instructor, Laura Elder, once taught at the Michigan school, founded in 1928 as a music and arts academy.
Covey didn't make the cut when she sent a CD audition to Michigan last year, but she now says the blow to her ego created an opportunity. She joined the youth orchestra.
"If I had gone (to Interlochen) last year, then I wouldn't have learned what I was going to learn this year," she said, referring not only to bearing down on her own studies but learning as part of an orchestra. "It's been a remarkable experience, because I only had experience playing harp with other harpists."
Covey aspires to teach harp at Interlochen, but wherever she goes it's safe to say she'll be pushing a large, oddly shaped instrument with her on its special dolly.
Don't tell her this story called the harp an oddly shaped instrument.
"I think it's gorgeous," she said. "So, I think it's heavenly. King David played the harp, and it's one of the first recorded instruments."
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If you go
What: Longview Area Youth Symphony Orchestra
When: 7:30 p.m. May 16
Where: S.E. Belcher Jr. Chapel and Performance Center, 2100 Mobberly Ave.
Cost: $5 general seating (cash or check)
Contact: (903) 233-3080 (11 a.m. to 4 p.m. weekdays) or go to www.belchercenter.com
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Show marks director's last hurrah
The May 16 performance of the Longview Area Youth Symphony Orchestra will be the final curtain for Director Carole Makowski, whose husband has been transferred.
"Considering he has hung around me for 21 years, I figured I should probably go along," Makowski quipped about her husband, Andy, an Eastman Chemical employee moving to a division in Kingsport. "I cannot believe I am leaving LAYSO."
Makowski has directed the youth orchestra since 2001, during which time the outfit has grown from a string group to a full symphony.
Longview Symphony Executive Director Carol Mullikin said the youth orchestra benefited from Makowski's hands-on direction.
"She has taught its musicians the mechanics of music and has managed to share her joy for it as well," Mullikin said. "There aren't many people who can do both, and we've been lucky enough to have benefitted from her talents. We thought long and hard about it, but decided to forgive her and let her go."
A search committee has formed to find the next director.
Makowski said the job fulfilled a lifelong aspiration to make music.
"The Longview Symphony board has given me the chance to actually conduct the orchestral repertoire that I love," she said, "and to realize my childhood 'vision' of creating the music I could then only conduct with a recording."
