Grads Form New Orchestra

Harvard students' musical careers don't have to end with graduation.

Two 1993 Harvard alumni said this week that they came up with a new way of performing classical music while sitting in a Harvard Square restaurant looking for a cure for the post-graduation blues.

As a result of that conversation, Scott Y. Yoo '93 and Richard J. Lim '93 founded the Metamorphosen Chamber Ensemble, an orchestral group composed of 23 of the country's top musicians.

Yoo says they founded the ensemble last October out of a conviction that classical music could attract younger audiences if it were presented in a more modern format.

"[Classical music] is suffering from stagnation," Yoo says.

One of the ensemble's goals is to attract a younger audience than that which traditionally attends classical concerts. The average age of Metamorphosen members is just 23, Yoo says.

But the two say they are still committed to quality; the organization's mission statement says the group "was founded in the belief that innovation need not come at the expense of substance."

Part of Metamorphosen's break with tradition will include a lecture before each performance and even spoken explanations during the performance, Yoo says.

In addition to performing classics of the chamber music genre, the group will premier at least one contemporary piece at each performance, Yoo says.

Both Lim and Yoo say their undergraduate participation in the Harvard-Radcliffe Orchestra (HRO) has helped them in their present undertaking.

HRO Director James D. Yannatos praises his former charges' efforts.

"They want to play beautiful music beautifully," says Yannatos, a senior lecturer on music. "They feel there's a responsibility to twentieth-century music and composers and a responsibility that these composers be heard by the community. It's really to be lauded."

As an undergraduate, Lim managed HRO's 1992 European tour and produced several benefit concerts for Phillips Brooks House.

"My experience at Harvard allowed me to tend to the details of production," Lim says.

Yoo, who received the prestigious Avery Fisher Music Career Grant last May, credits his undergraduate experience with his success at organizing the innovative group.

"I would not have been able to start this without going to Harvard," says Yoo, former HRO concert master.

Lim says he is hoping for a "huge turnout" of 1000 people at the concert debut October 7 at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston.

"We want to make an incredible impression," he says.

The concert will feature violinist Cho-Liang Lin, according to a press release.

Lim says players for the new orchestra were recruited from the Juilliard School of Music, the Curtis Institute of Music and the New England Conservatory of Music.