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The Cleveland Orchestra Youth Orchestra spends a lot of time together back home with four-hour rehearsals every weekend nine months out of the year, three major concerts at Severance Hall each season, plus “run-out” concerts to schools and community gatherings. They are friends and colleagues so it’s no surprise that togetherness has really been a keynote of this first international tour. Violinist Gabe Napoli says he’s actually made new COYO friends in these past few days, and Steve and Patty Roberts of Shaker Heights say their daughter Faith, a violist, won’t even have a meal with them because she’s having too good a time hanging with her buddies.
But Patty Roberts says she has no regrets about tagging along. “When we learned that our daughter was going to Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg to perform with COYO in the great concert halls of Europe there was no way we were not going to be there.”
The photo shows COYO musicians having breakfast together before touring Vienna’s famous Musikverein and leaving Vienna for Salzburg this morning.
