Student Symphony Orchestra continues to grow artistically amid pandemic

In any other year, orchestra members could be seen seated in a semicircle formation in a theater or auditorium, decked out in their formal, black attire, with instruments in hand and ready to perform for a live audience. Now, from one’s phone screen, audiences can see each musician performing in bubbles floating across a starry sky, playing against the backdrop of a moonlit lake and other unique visuals and animations. This is how USC’s Student Symphony Orchestra has made its transition to digital performances.

SSO is the University’s student-led interdisciplinary orchestra and has continued showcasing their music throughout the pandemic, with a lineup of performances and concerts continuing into the spring.

The group was founded 10 years ago under the name Concerto Chamber Orchestra and now boasts a group of over 100 members representing 40 majors across USC’s campus and includes a wind section alongside its core chamber orchestra. According to music director Adam Karelin, the majority of its members are non-music majors, which comprise over 70% of the orchestra. 

Elaine Huang, a senior majoring in human biology who serves as the orchestra’s president, said she was initially drawn to the orchestra specifically because of the accessibility and flexibility it offered students. 

“To find a student-led orchestra where our goal was to continue making music as a community regardless of your background … was a really great opportunity for me,” Huang said. “We pride ourselves in making music as accessible as possible.”

This semester, the group has continued producing their artistic work. Huang said their focus going into this 10th anniversary season was essentially to celebrate the people behind the orchestra and its growth over the past year. Music director Adam Karelin said that SSO has enjoyed its most successful season yet.

“We had the highest membership in our history, and the highest viewership in our history because of this digital platform,” Karelin said. “One of our videos from last summer just broke 20,000 views on YouTube. We were never getting that kind of audience retention before the pandemic.” 

SSO has also done more collaborations this year, working in tandem with the USC Chamber Ballet Company, the Aquarium of the Pacific and dancers from USC’s Kaufman School of Dance. 

“The three big values that we wanted to push into the next chapter of SSO’s life [are] engaging visual production, diversified repertoire and external collaborations,” Karelin said. 

On March 21, they premiered their Shostakovich Piano Concerto performance, a project done in partnership with Cal State Fullerton animator Tracey Muy and Thornton graduate student and pianist Wayne Yang. As the orchestra began the recording process, SSO worked with Muy to create visual elements to accompany the performance’s release on social media, Huang said. 

“We had a skeleton that we were able to give her,” Huang said. “As she continued animating we were able to get the rest of our musicians fully recorded to put together the piece.” 

Although an animator was brought in for this project, Karelin said the visuals are typically created by SSO’s own video production team. General members help dictate what the visual elements will look like and choose what best fits the atmosphere of the piece.

“In the Mary Lou Williams ‘Zodiac Suite,’ it’s very clear that you’re going to have images involving stars and each of the Zodiac signs,” Karelin said. “It’s not as clear, for example, when you’re doing the Shostakovich [piece] what the imagery should be. It’s really exciting to see the kinds of images that people have in their minds, and finding a collective consensus on what the orchestra members want to see.”

The Shostakovich performance is driven by a solo section played by Yang. It was Yang and his piano instructor, Professor of Practice Bernadene Blaha, who originally approached SSO with this piece. Vice president Linda Diaz, a junior majoring in composition, noted that the orchestra was especially moved by Yang’s musical talent in the face of a disability.

“Despite not having a left hand, he’s still able to play this concerto and play it immensely beautifully,” Diaz said. Yang not only contributed as a performer, but was a member of the production team behind this project. 

Huang cites the Shostakovich performance as one of her favorite projects the orchestra has undertaken. 

“It was just so gorgeous every single time I was recording it,” Huang said. “There’s just so many beautiful moments in that piece.”

SSO has also worked to honor the music of historically overlooked artists such as Joseph Bologne, a Black French composer. Bologne’s music was often neglected as a result of anti-Black racism that has been pervasive throughout the history of classical music, Karelin said.

“Bologne is often deliberately left out of concert halls and deliberately left out of history books because he was Black,” said Karelin, noting that much of much of the innovation in music Bologne made during his lifetime ended up being posthumously credited to Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart by historians. “We really want to share his work with the world.” 

SSO featured Bologne’s Symphony No. 2 last Fall and released the first of a three week series on April 3. The final two installments will be premiered in the upcoming weekends. 

Their final concert, capping off the orchestra’s 10th anniversary season, is slated to be on May 1, where the rest of their projects are to be released on social media. It will highlight two world premieres, including one from James Madison University junior Joe Jaxson. His original full-orchestra piece, “Fanfare and Overture,” was selected out of the many submissions SSO received when they hosted their annual worldwide call for scores in the summer. The second premiere is from SSO’s own representative for music majors, Aidan Gold, performing an original percussion concerto based on music from Turkmenistan.  

“[Gold’s] piece was actually slated to premiere last season and got cancelled because of [the coronavirus],” Karelin said. “So it’s really exciting to close our final concert this season with finally premiering that piece.”

The event will also feature a collaboration with the Thornton Jazz Orchestra under director Bob Mintzer, a Grammy Award-winning saxophonist. Another project in preparation for months, Thornton’s orchestra recorded their sections last semester, and as SSO recorded their respective parts this semester, the project can finally come together. According to Huang, this concert in particular will be especially reflective of the orchestra’s endurance through the pandemic. 

“It’s the culmination of a very turbulent but growth centered year,” Huang said. “We really did our best to continue music making afloat throughout the pandemic. Rather than settling for less we kind of found our own way to take our situation and create our own spin in it.”

Beyond the main features, the concert will include renditions of Duke Ellington’s “Caravan” and Count Basie’s “April in Paris.”

Although audiences will not get to experience an in-person performance in the Bovard Auditorium this semester, the orchestra members look forward to it nevertheless, Diaz said.

“We’re really excited to be putting on this concert,” Diaz said. “There are so many people working behind the scenes … to continue [making music] no matter what.”