The Greater Dallas Youth Orchestra (GDYO) is a youth orchestra in Dallas, Texas founded in 1972. It consists of 7 groups from ages five to eighteen and all instruments in the symphony orchestra. The first group is the Young Performers Orchestra (YPO) which is the youngest group. The second group is the Dallas String Ensemble (DSE). Next is the Sinfonietta group which focuses on slightly harder music and technique. Then there is the Philharmonic which is a full orchestra with wind instruments also and percussion. There is also a Wind Symphony which is only winds, brass and percussion. The sixth group is the flute choir which has 12 members performing only on flute. Finally there is the GDYO which is the highest level orchestra.
Every 3–4 years they go on tour outside North America. In 1998 they played in England, in 2004 in Poland, Germany, and the Czech Republic, and the most recent trip in 2007 was to China.
In 2000 the GDYO was one of five orchestras to qualify for the National Youth Orchestra Festival in Sarasota, Florida.
Famous quotes containing the words greater, dallas, youth and/or orchestra:
“The greater number of men are merely corporals.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“If a foreign country doesn’t look like a middle-class suburb of Dallas or Detroit, then obviously the natives must be dangerous as well as badly dressed.”
—Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)
“Where the Youth pined away with desire,
And the pale Virgin shrouded in snow,
Arise from their graves and aspire,
Where my Sun-flower wishes to go.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)
“As the artist
extends his world with
one gratuitous flourish—a stroke of white or
a run on the clarinet above the
bass tones of the orchestra ...”
—Denise Levertov (b. 1923)