Skylands Youth Symphony to play in Vernon

VERNON - The Skylands Youth Symphony will present its spring concert at 2 p.m., Sunday, May 23. The young musicians of the Skylands Youth Symphony and its Chamber group will perform at the St. Thomas Episcopal Church located on Route 94, Vernon. Admission is $5 and children under 10 are free. Tickets may be purchased at the door or in advance by calling Skylands Youth Symphony at 973)-875-2560. SYS performed its winter concert in Warwick, New York. The Chamber group performed at the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council's annual meeting in March. Recently, the Chamber Group was invited to perform at the Springfest Flower & Garden Show's Annual Agricultural Scholarship Gala. Sixty members of the Symphony, along with parents, witnessed Itzhak Perlman in concert at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark. Keely Gould, who is a graduate of The College of St. Rose and has a Masters degree in Music Education from The Central Connecticut State University, conducts the Skylands Youth Symphony. Gould has performed with The Orange County Music Educators Orchestra, The Greater Newburgh Symphony Orchestra and numerous freelance projects. She is also a private violin teacher and a music educator in Warwick, NY. The Skylands Youth Symphony, a non-profit corporation, was organized in the spring of 1997 and is dedicated to providing "a forum for young musicians, primarily but not exclusively strings, to learn and perform a classical string orchestra repertoire in a supportive and musically competent environment. It is a haven for artistic expression for young musicians in and around the Sussex County area. Education, rehearsal, appreciation and performance are the basic goals. The musicians' ages in these symphony group range from 10 to 18 years old. To be eligible, one must have studied music for at least two years on one's instrument, be able to read music, and must audition. In addition to performing concerts, the group has offered music theory classes, music workshops, symphony trips and scholarships. As a non-profit corporation, the group is totally dependent on tuition, donations, fund raising and grants. Funding has been made available in part by the Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment of the Arts, through the State/County Partnership Block Grant Program, as administered by the Sussex County Arts and Heritage Council and supported by the Sussex County Board of Freeholders.