New Jersey Youth Symphony Opens Season with Spectacular Korean Three-Drum Dance

    NEW PROVIDENCE, NJ, October 11, 2022 /24-7PressRelease/ -- The New Jersey Youth Symphony (NJYS), a program of Wharton Arts, officially opens the symphonic season on Saturday, October 30 at 4:00 p.m. at The Patriots Theater at the War Memorial in Trenton with a dynamic concert featuring the NJYS Youth Symphony and Samgomu Dancers Holly Shin-Young Knudson, Quinn Lee, and Brooke Jee-in Newmaster. The award-winning orchestra under the baton of Helen H. Cha-Pyo presents Symphonic Dances!, a vibrant display of Korean arts and culture featuring traditional Korean dancing and drumming. Rachmaninoff's Symphonic Dances and Manuel de Falla's Three-Cornered Hat, Suite No. 2 will interlace with Kyle Newmaster's Impressions of Cheonmachong: Concerto for Korean Three Drum Dance for a spectacular family event. Tickets are $20 for adults and $15 for students and seniors available at NJYS.org.

Said Cha-Pyo, "This exciting collaboration with Kyle and Brooke is truly a unique and enriching musical experience for our youth musicians, and I anticipate it will be a powerful experience for the audience. They will have the opportunity to hear Brooke's personal story immediately followed by her performance of Impressions of Cheonmachong. It is my hope that this concert will inspire all of us as we share music and dance together from around the world in the context of personal stories."

Samgomu, often called "three drum dance" or standing "drum dance," is a traditional Korean art form where each dancer is surrounded on three sides by drums positioned in a way that allows the dancers to play complex rhythms while moving in synchronization. Impressions of Cheonmachong: Concerto for Korean Three Drum Dance, composed by Kyle Newmaster and choreographed by Brooke Newmaster, was commissioned for the Cape Symphony's 2016 concert, "The Silk Road and Beyond." The first collaboration piece for the sibling team, the work is a concerto for traditional Korean Samgomu dancing and drumming and large symphony orchestra. Very much a family story, the work began with Brooke's adoption and her passion for reclaiming her Korean cultural heritage. Together Brooke and Kyle created a work that both captures their family love and tells the compelling story of a great ancient king and his horse, the result being a piece that isn't strictly Korean or American. Brooke and Kyle dedicate Impressions of Cheonmachong to their parents, Marge and Ray Newmaster, and to Brooke's Korean birth mother.

Brooke Jee-in Newmaster is the director of JangmiArts, a program that provides Korean traditional dance, drumming, music, folk art lessons, and workshops since 1984. JangmiArts focuses on supporting Korean Adoptees of all ages to experience Korean culture through the arts. People of all backgrounds are invited to learn together. Newmaster's lifelong passion for Korean traditional culture and her experience as a transnational, transracial Korean adoptee growing up in Minnesota was the genesis for Impressions of Cheonmachong. Holly Shin Young Knudson was born in Seoul, South Korea. She was adopted when she was six months old by a family in Minnesota and has been dancing with JangmiArts for over 27 years. She is a manager at U.S. Bank. Quinn Lee was adopted when she was six months old into a family where she has a younger brother biological to her adoptive parents. She grew up and still lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Quinn has been part of JangmiArts since she was in six years old. She is currently the Assistant Extended Learning Coordinator at Yinghua Academy, a Chinese immersion school.

The NJYS Youth Symphony will present four signature concerts this season chronicling a variety of dance rhythms from across the globe in the Beyond Cultural Boundaries Series: A Confluence of Music, Dance, and Story. Tickets and event details for all NJYS concerts can be found at NJYS.org.

Wharton Arts' mission is to offer accessible, high quality performing arts education that sparks personal growth and builds inclusive communities.

Wharton Arts' vision is for a transformative performing arts education in an inclusive community to be accessible for everyone.

Wharton Arts is New Jersey's largest independent non-profit community performing arts education center serving nearly 2,000 students through a range of classes and ensembles. The 5 ensembles of the New Jersey Youth Chorus, an auditioned choral ensemble program for students in grades 3–12, encourage a love and appreciation of choral music while nurturing personal growth and creative development. The 15 ensembles of the New Jersey Youth Symphony, which serve over 500 students in grades 3–12 by audition, inspire young people to achieve musical excellence through high-level ensemble training and performance opportunities. Based in Paterson, the Paterson Music Project is an El Sistema-inspired program of Wharton Arts that uses music education as a vehicle for social action by empowering and inspiring young people to achieve their full potential through the community experience of ensemble learning and playing. From Pathways classes for young children to Lifelong Learning programs for adults, the Wharton Performing Arts School has a robust musical theater and drama program and offers both private and group classes for instruments and voice for all ages and all abilities. With the belief in the positive and unifying influence of music and that performing arts education should be accessible to all people regardless of their ability to pay, Wharton Arts offers need-based scholarships.

Wharton Arts is located in Berkeley Heights, New Providence, and Paterson, NJ and reaches students from 12 counties. All of Wharton Arts' extraordinary teaching artists, faculty members, and conductors hold degrees in their teaching specialty and have been vetted and trained to enable our students to achieve their personal best.

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