Application for the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation Grant

Executive Summary

The St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra (SPYO) was started in the spring 2013 by high school students with the goal to create an inclusive and supportive community of musicians in Champaign-Urbana. In 2013, the group consisted of ten middle and high school students from three different schools. Since then, the group has grown to having over sixty members at a time ranging from seventh to twelfth grades and representing eight schools: Centennial, Central, Urbana, and University High Schools as well as Edison, Franklin, Holy Cross, and Urbana Middle Schools. It is the only completely student-run youth orchestra in the nation. The role the students play range from instrumentalists and conductors to arrangers and administration.

Sponsored by St. Patrick’s Church in Urbana, the youth orchestra played their first concert in the church. SPYO has performed in several churches in Champaign-Urbana. While the rehearsal spaces, performance locations, and funding comes from Catholic Church, the members of SPYO do not have to be in any way affiliated with the Catholic faith to participate.

The St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra has also had the honor of performing with bass-baritone Ricardo Herrera in a benefit concert in April of 2015. The donations acquired during this concert helped raise money for a mission trip for the St. Patrick’s Church youth group as well as the initial SPYO scholarship program. Over $10,000 were raised and SPYO was able to give scholarships to many members in order to help them further their music education.

For this reason, the St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra invites the Elizabeth F. Cheney Foundation to consider a grant of $10,000 to support young musicians who are passionate about playing orchestral music.

Needs Assessment

 The St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra has several material needs. St. Patrick’s Parish has graciously provided rehearsal spaces, performance locations, music stands, and funds for buying music. Aside from paying individually for their lessons, the members of the orchestra also buy or rent their own instruments. St. Patrick’s Church also allows SPYO to use their piano. String, wind, and brass instruments are reasonably affordable for their families so these instrumentalists have no issue acquiring them. Percussionists, however, have more difficulty purchasing all of their equipment due to the large range of instruments that vary depending on the piece that is being played.

Currently, University and Judah High Schools allow the St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra to borrow their percussion instruments for concerts. Because the percussion instruments belong to the high schools, other students need to play them during classes and SPYO only has limited time to practice with percussion before the concert. The funds that St. Patrick’s Parish has set aside for the youth orchestra can provide some instruments, but timpani are out of the budget range.

For the St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra to achieve its goal of providing the best opportunities it can for young people to grow in their music, one critical factor is practicing making the best music that the group can. To be successful, the orchestra music have all of the pieces necessary for the music to be played most effectively. Timpani are a key instrument to many orchestral works as they allow for many dramatics effects in rhythm, pitch, and dynamic that are important to a piece and other instruments cannot provide.

$10,000 is enough to buy a set of four Yamaha Portable Timpani. Because they are lightweight, these timpani will be able to be transported to a variety of rehearsal and performance locations for the St. Patrick’s Youth Orchestra. Once the orchestra has a set of timpani that they own, the timpani will be stored in St. Patrick’s church where they will be available for the orchestra to use during weekly rehearsals. The certainty of having the instruments will allow the orchestra to plan rehearsals more freely and the extended amount of practice time will ensure that the music that the students create is their best work.