Brandon Leonard still gets nervous before concerts. “It never really goes away,” he says.
The butterflies come back despite Leonard attaining an impressive level of mastery at an early age and being recognized as one of the best young cellists in the United States. The Chamblee High School senior, who has been admitted to the Juilliard School in the fall, won first place in the 2023 Sphinx Competition, a contest sponsored by a nonprofit organization that promotes diversity and excellence for minority classical music students.
Credit: LunahZon Photography
Credit: LunahZon Photography
Leonard says he chose the cello in fourth grade, for no particular reason other than a school friend already played cello and he wanted to start learning an instrument for the school orchestra. Now his diligence, practicing four hours every day in addition to school, has led him to Juilliard, the Sphinx, and to performing at the Franklin Pond Fall into Spring Finale Community Concert, which will be held April 30 at Woodruff Arts Center.
His practice routine can be, he acknowledges, “a little isolating. I don’t see my friends that much and I don’t spend too much time socializing.”
“He plays with so much feeling and heart and that’s what makes him great,” says Ronda Respess, a former Atlanta Symphony Orchestra violinist who runs the Franklin Pond Chamber Music school and has watched Leonard grow over three years.
“If you’re going to win major competitions you have to have the discipline and the technique, but you have to be interesting,” she says. “I tell the kids if you don’t inspire yourselves, you’re not going to inspire anyone else.”
Leonard is one of 26 young classical musicians who will be showing their skills April 30 as part of Franklin Pond’s and the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra Chamber Players’ annual spring concert.
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of players who could fit into a chamber or room, the best known of which is probably the string quartet, with two violins, one viola and one cello. Franklin Pond focuses on stringed instruments in groups of two to five.
“I love orchestras, but in an orchestra, particularly as a string player, you can get lost,” says Respess. “There are 10 people playing your part; you can’t hear yourself really well. In chamber music, you can really hear yourself.”
Respess should know. She was a violinist with the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra for 51 years, retiring in 2020. But she has also been a music teacher most of her life, and in 2001 she noticed how many students had dropped their school music education in the summer. “I didn’t think about founding an organization; I was just trying to get kids together,” she says. Franklin Pond was named after the street she lives on.
Franklin Pond, the ASO Youth Orchestra Chamber Players, and the ASO’s Talent Development Program all intersect with one another to nurture the next generation of classical musicians. Respess says it’s about learning more than just bowing and fingering.
“We’re training leaders,” says Respess. “We’re not just training kids to play instruments. Kids know how to play the instruments. We work on leadership, communication, compromise, attention to detail, teamwork, cooperating and getting your feelings out in the open.
“They are responsible for their own part and then to meld it with the rest of the parts so the group sounds like one instrument. That’s a hard thing.”
This year’s performance will feature the U.S. premiere of Sibelius’s Piano Quartet in D Minor performed by the Varro Quartet, consisting of three students from Starr’s Mill High School in Fayetteville and one student from Kell High School in Marietta.
The piece has only been recorded once and has never been performed in the United States, but Ching-Ching Yap, mother of Varro Quartet violinist Didi Stone, tracked down the sheet music, dealing with Sibelius’ granddaughter and the National Library of Finland in a marathon of international performance rights clearances.
CONCERT PREVIEW
Franklin Pond Fall into Spring Finale Community Concert
3 p.m. April 30. Free. Rich Theatre at Woodruff Arts Center, 1280 Peachtree St., Atlanta. 404-252-3479, franklinpond.org.
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