SURREY — A weekend concert is sure to be a moving experience for members of Surrey Youth Orchestra and its audience.
More than 100 young musicians will perform during a special event dubbed "Space and Time," set for 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 28 at a pair of venues in the City Centre area of Surrey.
Admission is free at the afternoon concert, which starts in the atrium — seven floors of it — at Surrey City Hall (13450 104th Ave.) and continues at the nearby City Centre Library.
"Once part one (of the concert) is complete (approximately 20 minutes), the performers and audience will move over to the library together for part two," explained Heather Christiansen, general manager of Surrey Symphony Society.
"In both venues, the students will be staged throughout different areas and floors. Both venues are open concept, so the performers will be seen and heard from all the different levels."
The society commissioned the "Space and Time" work by Surrey-born composer Jordan Nobles as part of a project "to make Canadian orchestral music accessible to a wider public for free, and to celebrate two unique cultural spaces in Surrey."
The initiative is funded by the City of Surrey's cultural grants program, the Arts Council of Surrey and Metro Vancouver regional district.
Joel Strobbe, conductor of Surrey Youth Orchestra, said he's honoured to work with such talented youth and expose them to "completely new ideas of sound and its relation to music. It is great to see the reaction on the students' faces as they start to understand the concepts and explore the fundamental ideas of sound and how it travels through a given space."
Last fall, the non-profit Surrey Symphony Society named Stobbe as director of its youth orchestra. Also welcomed to the organization were Ben Goheen (as director of the expanded intermediate orchestra, formerly Surrey Strings) and Andrea Taylor (conductor of the Junior Strings, the society's youngest orchestra).
See video of Surrey Youth Orchestra performance on the Now's YouTube channel: