Claire Herman, left, and her sisters Mary Margaret and Abigail, right, flank a pair of twins who are also members of the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra, bassist Carter Buckner and violist Evan Buckner.

In a stately building tucked into one corner of St. John’s Catholic Center, an orchestra is warming up. Fingers move deftly along frets as brass valves trill scales and sheet music flutters. Musicians share muted banter under the silent, stony gaze of hourglass cello cases crowding for space off to one side.

No one in the room is out of high school – some not by a long shot – yet each week brings a journey through symphonic masterworks that unite the Arkansas Symphony Youth Orchestra.

“I’ve always been attracted to the larger major symphonies, and when I tried out here I was kind of nervous,” said violist Evan Buckner, 17. “That first concert, when the conductor gave the downbeat for Tchaikovsky, it was like going through a different doorway of music.

“It was really more than exciting. I knew then that this is something that I had serious interest in.”

More musicians arrive and the din grows, but it’s unlike other ambient sounds of a crowded room. Even warming up, the skill and precision of a measure here, or a complex run there, transcends mere noise. The parts the youths play are lovely even in their discordance as riffing falls into an odd order and then spirals off in a hundred different directions.

“I love the differences in the bass and all the different parts and hearing them all combine together, it’s really pretty,” said Claire Herman, 18, sitting near Buckner in a row of violas.

Herman could just as well be talking about the diversity in the room, a haphazard palette of skin tones, hair styles and fashion sense coalescing to create the harmonic and melodic whole. Less conspicuous are the disparate neighborhoods and socio-economic conditions each of these kids inhabit, and that’s part of the beauty. No matter what car you arrived in, dedication and practice brought you here.

“The very first rehearsal our first year we played Swan Lake,” recalled bassist Carter Buckner, Evan’s twin brother. “We played the introduction and I was freaked out because I was the youngest person there, in the very back of the bass section. And, first note we all start playing and I freeze. I stopped playing. It was almost like a wake-up call, like OK, I’m part of something that’s a lot bigger than I could have anticipated. I kind of took in that moment and haven’t forgotten it.”

The Buckners and Herman may not be typical in many ways, but they are the precisely the kinds of kids ASO has sought to reach during its 30 years sponsoring youth ensembles. Geoffrey Robson, associate conductor, co-manages the youth programs comprising four progressive groups, Preparatory Orchestra, Prelude Ensemble, Academy Ensemble and finally Youth Orchestra, which he directs.

Members of the youth orchestra take their cue from Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson.

“In a much heavier-populated area, a top-level youth orchestra would be an ultra-competitive environment where all of the kids are going to go to conservatory and want to be professional musicians,” he said. “That’s not exactly what we’re trying to do. We do work with the top-level, most-talented kids, but I think the most important thing this program teaches is leadership skills and empowerment to be a productive and integral part of a working group. Those are skills they can take to everything they do outside of music as well as in music.”

The Buckners, who attend Pine Bluff High School, grew up in a household where mom Anissa played piano at church and dad Ed was eclectic in his musical tastes. The boys’ earliest musical memory was a classical CD for children, followed by piano lessons and finally orchestral instruments seven years ago. Neither brother got his first choice; Evan’s hands were too big for violin so he took up viola, Carter’s hands were too small for cello so he drew bass. But not playing music was never seriously considered.

“Our first year in public school we had the choice to play (in orchestra),” Carter said. “It was kind of like you did that or you didn’t do anything.”

Claire Herman of Wye Mountain (center) coaxes notes from her viola.

Herman also grew up in a home awash in music, most of it homegrown. The third of six, she and her four sisters have all participated in the ASO youth ensembles ever since the family moved to Wye Mountain from North Carolina.

The first of the line, Rachel, set the bar high for the rest of the homeschooled Herman kids, graduating from college with a degree in music. Years following in her sister’s accomplished footsteps honed Claire’s ambition and competitiveness, but she also learned to appreciate the process along with the outcome.

“Definitely when I was younger, I had to work really hard because I had to be as good as my older sister,” she said. “But as we got older, while we’re very competitive in other things, we’re all at different levels musically. It does spur us on to practice, but that’s not our sole reason for practicing.”

Case in point, both Mary Margaret Herman, 13, and Abigail Herman, 16, take far different pleasure and appreciation from music than their sisters, even though both have been taking lessons since around age 6 and demonstrated talent enough to ascend through the ranks of the Arkansas Symphony youth programs.

Mary Margaret Herman,13, and sisters Claire, 18, and Abigail, 16, are all members of the Arkansas Symphony youth program. The Hermans, of Wye Mountain, are just one set of siblings in the program.

In fact, none of the kids necessarily see themselves following music exclusively through college and into the professional ranks. But to a person they credited the ASO program with embedding an indelible love and appreciation for the art form.

“I’ve always used music as a therapy; it’s always been the thing that relieves me after a week,” Carter said. “While I don’t really have future plans with music — I change my majors and career interests every other week — I do want to continue doing it somehow. You don’t just let go of it after all of these years. It’s a part of you now.”

Learn more:  ArkansasSymphony.org

Members of the youth orchestra take their cue from Associate Conductor Geoffrey Robson.