A Norwegian Perspective on the IAYO Festival of Youth Orchestras

After the 29th Festival of Youth Orchestras this February, we had the pleasure of speaking with Terje Winther, Managing Director of the Norwegian Youth Orchestra Organization (UNOF), about his experience at the event and the differences between youth orchestra cultures in Ireland and Norway. During his visit to the Festival, Terje had the opportunity to sit in on rehearsals and go backstage throughout the day, gaining a unique insight into the workings of the Festival. We were keen to hear his reflections—not only on what he observed in Ireland but also on how it compared to youth orchestras in Norway.

UNOF and IAYO are similar organisations in some aspects and there has been communication and collaboration over the years between both organisations. In Norway, all democratic youth orchestras can become members of UNOF. These range from small chamber groups to full-size symphony orchestras. UNOF also runs the Norwegian Youth Symphony Orchestra, a national ensemble for young musicians aged 13 to 20, and organises summer schools across the country. One area where IAYO has been particularly inspired by UNOF is in its approach to youth participation. Following conversations with him in 2015, IAYO invited three young people to join its Board of Directors. While the experience was positive overall, their roles remained more observational than participatory. This experience, however, proved to be a catalyst. It led to the creation of IAYO’s Youth Work Plan and subsequent focus on youth participation which can be seen at the Festival itself.

Terje explained that youth orchestra festivals in Norway are very different to the IAYO Festival for a few different reasons. There are fewer youth orchestra festivals, and the festivals that do exist are run on the day by adults. There are also no national festivals for youth orchestras. Norway also has more chamber, choral, and wind band festivals. We asked Terje about the makeup of Irish orchestras in comparison to Norwegian orchestras, “The member orchestras in UNOF are mostly string-based. It is only the older teenagers that are involved with symphony orchestras. This is probably because the wind band organisation is so strong in Norway, so most wind and percussion players are in wind bands when they start and only later join symphonic ensembles. Wind bands in Norway (and their organisations) are much older than the music schools.  So my observation is that in Ireland there are much more mixed instrument ensembles than in Norway, and this ties in with what I have observed in many European countries. We do have some mixed instrument ensembles for the very young.”

Norway has a very strong music education system but Terje feels that there are some limitations. He explains, “The municipal music schools starts at the age of going to school, which is at 6 or 7 years old, while many of the orchestras in Norway recruit from the age of 3 to 5 years. There are long waiting lists at the music schools, so many of our member orchestras recruit and educate the young musicians themselves. Many orchestras have a mix of education at music schools and education within the orchestra. Frustratingly, there are a lot of music schools that do not have any ensemble or orchestra training, only individual education. Many teachers and/or music school leaders actually have a negative attitude towards ensemble education”.

Interestingly, despite the very high level of youth participation in UNOF, this does not translate into the running of festivals and other events. Since 1991 the Norwegian government has favoured organisations that have significant youth representation in terms of funding and supports, and have also favoured organisations that have youth representatives on their board. UNOF chose years ago to follow this, and now has a standard practice of selecting a mixed-age group for its national board. Young people represent themselves, so about half of the national board consists of young people. The very young children (those who are 11 years and younger) are represented by their parents and/or tutors, so about half of the national board consists of adults. Since 2001, all UNOF presidents have been young people. Terje says “This has happened naturally, and our experience with this has been so good that we have continued to do so. Often we have an adult as vice-president, but all our presidents over the last 20 years have been such strong leaders, that the vice-president is more a support for the board, as opposed to acting like the president”.

As part of IAYO’s youth training programme, the on-stage and backstage areas of the NCH are managed by young people aged 16-24 years of age. Both the Backstage Manager, Giovana Alice Melo de Brito, and, Stage Manager, Arthur Gray, had volunteered and worked at the festival in previous years. Working alongside them were Percussion Manager, Ashyln (Yunan Ling), and volunteers Emma Picovici, Adam Antal, Vivienne King, and Olivia King. Before attending the IAYO Festival, Terje thought it might be like an “ant hill”, and that things might not run smoothly due to the younger age profile of the crew. However, witnessing the crew at work changed his opinion. He was surprised and impressed by how smoothly it ran. He remarked that he has attended professional symphony orchestra concerts where there was more confusion and disarray backstage.

Terje and UNOF are considering organising a festival similar in part to the IAYO Festival in Norway. As part of this research and to get inspiration, Terje is visiting a number of festivals around Europe, including the European Orchestra Festival in Avignon, France this summer to compare and contrast all the festivals. After attending the IAYO Festival, he feels that orchestras in Norway would like chance to do something similar to IAYO – a day festival which is youth-led. However, there are obvious geographical differences between Norway and Ireland, so the Norwegian festival would have to be slightly different. Due to the length of Norway, orchestras from different regions can’t traverse most of the country in one day. Thus, they would start with a regional festival.

His verdict was that there was a very high level of playing at the IAYO Festival and that the atmosphere was fun. He observed very few issues with tuning and tempo, he found the orchestras very enjoyable to listen to. Despite the differences across orchestras in ages, there was a consistently high standard of playing across the day and he felt that the orchestras had the right approach to choosing repertoire. He believes that the great atmosphere was in part due to the younger crew, as having these younger people involved improves atmosphere for the musicians. It gives them a sense of reassurance and perhaps even some inspiration for getting involved. Speaking on differences between repertoires, he explained “Norwegian orchestras do play film music and arrangements of popular music, and this tends to be the same as I have seen in orchestras in Ireland. However, when it comes to the ‘traditional’ classic repertoire, Norwegian orchestras choose different works than what I have seen in orchestras in Ireland. Also, many of the Norwegian orchestras, especially the very young, play simpler works, sort of more sing-along stuff than the heavy and very famous classic standards.”

We also asked for his opinion on how we run things and protocol at the Festival, he thought it was a bit over the top at first. Terje and the UNOF office were rather amused at the level of details, right down to protocol for flowers being presented. However, after some consideration he felt that this level of detail ultimately is useful, especially for younger people who may be nervous. He said it is easy to forget that someone might be doing something for the first time and this could help assuage any nerves. He thinks that Norway does things differently to central Europe and to us in terms of planning. He joked that Sweden plans things for 10 years, while Norway just goes and does things for 10 years and then figures out how to do things correctly. In Norway, you’d just tell young people to go do it and they would figure it out as they go along. While knowledge sharing is very important, he feels that with their potential festival, they would not have such a detailed plan protocol and documentation.

We are very grateful that Terje could attend the Festival and we look forward to hearing more about future plans for a Norwegian Youth Orchestra Festival. As we prepare for our 30th Festival of Youth Orchestras in 2026, hearing Terje’s observations has given us some food for thought.

Response from Ireland

Below, Allin Gray, IAYO CEO, responds to Terje.

It was great to see Terje again at our Festival this year. We have crossed paths numerous times over the years, most often at the European Orchestra Festival, which Terje co-directed when it was held in Bergen in Norway in 2018. There is no standard format for how youth and amateur orchestra associations run throughout Europe and, of all the organisations in the European Orchestra Federation, UNOF is the one we feel closest to in the work we do and how we do it.

Having travelled to Norway on a few occasions and attended festivals and youth orchestra courses, I have great admiration for the music education that is available in Norway and the democratic participation in youth orchestras. I’m a little shocked to think that some teachers there don’t value ensemble playing but, if I started turning stones closer to home, I might find that some places too. However, from travels around Europe, talking to music teachers and youth orchestra conductors and organisers, it does seem that Ireland has a very community-oriented approach when it comes to playing in orchestras and ensembles. Given that our level of formal music learning in classical instruments (in terms of the numbers learning) is much lower than many other countries, we have lots of youth orchestras.

Most impressive for me in visiting Norway were the “community musicians” in a town and hinterland of c.50,000 people in the west of Norway. They played as a professional string quartet, taught in the local music school and conducted and played in the local amateur orchestra, all as part of government-funded jobs. We could certainly do with some of those hereabouts and the cost is not really all that prohibitive: it’s more a matter of where, as a nation, we choose to invest our resources.

One of the most striking moments for me on that trip to Norway was listening to an orchestral tutor talk to the players in the orchestra camp a couple of days before the performance about it being okay to not play all the notes. Norway has a very strong culture of honesty and the tutor explained that moving a bow back and forward that wasn’t touching the strings was not dishonest: it was part of being a good orchestral player. When I came back to Ireland, I talked to a few musicians who told me that it is the teacher’s job to communicate that to young musicians. I sometimes wonder if some of those young players who don’t stay long in orchestras might just not know that the “fake it ‘til you make it” approach is perfectly okay and leave because they don’t feel good enough. Something to keep in mind for teachers and conductors reading this if it’s already not part of your process.

We have certainly learned a lot from Terje and UNOF over the years and it is most gratifying that Terje came to Ireland to learn about our festival and plans to build some of what we do into a Norwegian youth orchestra festival. It’s also funny and a cultural exchange in itself to hear that the UNOF staff were chuckling at the level of detail in our festival documentation and preparations. We’re delighted that the crew of the festival has become younger and younger over the years while the smooth running of the event has only improved. I was particularly proud this year as the stage manager was my own young’un and that the planning and execution of all the stage changes were quite so good.

As CEO of IAYO, I’m as interested in the young people moving the chairs and music stands as I am in the young people playing music. It is a very big day for them too and they always make a great contribution.

The detail in the planning, however, isn’t so much because the crew on stage and back stage are all young people. We do that for ourselves so that everyone knows what needs to happen and when. I have seen it go wrong and it’s difficult to sit in the auditorium thinking, “Well, that shouldn’t be happening”. It’s not all done from scratch either: we start from what happened last year and change what needs to be changed and not what doesn’t. It also does help, though, when young people take charge on the day that they know the preparations have been made and everything is arriving. We like experiential learning too but try to keep it off the stage of the National Concert Hall.

Here in IAYO, we do often just have a go and figure it out as we go along but we also try and make it work better every year in so far as we can. Somewhere between Norwegian and Swedish. Most of all, it’s lovely to have our foreign colleagues come along to see and hear what we do and experience the special moments that happen at our Festival at the National Concert Hall. I’m very much looking forward to the 30th.