Classics for Kids | YOUTH Orchestra | Young Performers Competition | Honors Concert
The St. Cloud Symphony Youth Orchestra
The Goal of the St. Cloud Symphony Youth Orchestra is: To serve the middle school and high school music students of Central Minnesota by giving them an experience they could not have anywhere else: the opportunity to perform with a group of musicians their own age but not from their own school.
Launched in 2007, the St. Cloud Symphony Youth Orchestra augments the St. Cloud Symphony Youth Orchestra welcomes students from more than 10 counties, including Stearns. The program offers some area students, whose schools may not have music programs available, an opportunity to enhance their skills and participate in a performance group.
We welcome all violin, viola, cello and bass players in 7th through 12th grades, who have at least two years of playing experience, are proficient in reading music and who have had at least some shifting and/or extension experience.
For more information, including eligibility questions, please contact Dr. Daniel O'Bryant () or Kara Mather at ()
Dr. Daniel O’Bryant, Conductor
Daniel O’Bryant is Director of Orchestras and Low Strings at St. Cloud State University. His bass teachers include Bruce Bransby, of the Indiana School of Music, and Walter Birkedahl of Brigham Young University. O’Bryant served as assistant-principal bassist with the Civic Orchestra of Chicago, and section bassist with Music of the Baroque, the Elgin Symphony, Chicago Sinfonietta, Ballet West, and the Salt Lake Opera Company.
He was awarded a full fellowship to study bass at the Aspen Music Festival, and has been a featured soloist with many prominent orchestras. His conducting teachers include Daniel Lewis, Donald Thulean, Kory Katseanes, Timothy Russell, Gary Hill, and William Reber. O’Bryant’s conducting engagements include assistant conductor of the Salt Lake Opera Company, assistant conductor of the Brigham Young University and Arizona State University Orchestras, founder and conductor of the Utah County Chamber Players, assistant conductor of the Utah Valley Youth Symphony, and orchestra director at Jackson Intermediate in Houston, Texas.
In 2007, he was named as music director of the Heartland Symphony Orchestra and the St. Cloud Symphony Youth Orchestra.
Kara Mather, Assistant Conductor
Ms. Kara Mather started her B.A. is Music at St. Olaf College and is currently finishing her B.S. in Music Education at St. Cloud State University. She has studied violin with Carol Ferkalo in Westland, Michigan, James Berg of G.T.C.Y.S. in Minnesota, Lucinda Marvin at St. Olaf College and, most recently, with Dr. Marion Judish at St. Cloud State University. Kara has been playing violin with the St. Cloud Symphony Orchestra since 2001 and has had principal chairs with the St. Cloud State University Orchestra since 2003. She is the founder and conductor for the Monticello Community Strings Orchestra, a fifty-member string orchestra that just finished their sixth season.
