JUGENDSINFONIEORCHESTER MANNHEIM
The Mannheim Youth Symphony Orchestra (JSOM) was founded by Hanno Haag in 1977. In 1999 the orchestra flourished under Diethard Laxa for the next 17 years. The orchestra is open to all players who are sufficiently proficient at their instruments to take the challenging program in their stride. There are about 90 young people in JSOM who attend the weekly rehearsals in the Mannheim music school’s “Börsensaal” in E4 in the centre of Mannheim. The members come from across the region “Rhine-Neckar”- not only from Mannheim.
The core of the orchestra is made up of members between 14 and 18 years of age. However, some extremely gifted students are as young as 12 and some of the older members just do not want to leave, so the age range is from 12 to 25. Bringing them all together to play as one body is a challenging task.
The orchestra spends an intensive week rehearsing the new pieces for the next season during the carnival celebrations in February each year. This gives the young people the chance to get to know each other a bit more outside of normal Wednesday rehearsals.
There are about 5-10 concerts a year, mostly in the surrounding area. However, there are also opportunities to play nationally and internationally when on tour (Australia, Finland, Italy, Japan, Canada, Norway, Sweden, Netherlands, Hungary, USA. Cyprus……).
Jan-Paul Reinke was appointed in 2016 to further nurture and guide this egroup of talented and dedicated young musicians on their musical journey.