For the first time in its 45-year history, the Empire State Youth Orchestra will have a permanent home of its own.
The space will be in the former St. Joseph’s Church Parish Center in Schenectady County, and it will serve as home to the orchestra’s ensembles and its staff’s offices. Currently, ESYO uses Proctor’s Theatre in Schenectady and Yates Elementary School in the Schenectady City School District.
Rebecca Calos, Executive Director of ESYO, said the building was a long time coming.
“I’ve called this building the Goldilocks building for a reason,” she said. “It’s like just the right size in just the right place for just the right amount of money, and it’s really come through in that way. It’s like a vision that, you know, has finally come to fruition for the organization.”
According to Calos, funding from the state’s Council on the Arts and the state legislature were instrumental in making the purchase of the property possible. ESYO received $3.5 million from New York State’s Council on the Arts, and $3 million from the assembly budget for the 2025-2026 financial year. The orchestra is still in need of $2 million more for the completion of the construction, which the organization plans to raise funds for with private donations over the next year. Construction is projected to be complete by next December.
The new funds will allow ESYO to renovate the former parish building and its acoustics to make a rehearsal space, practice rooms, workspaces, and offices for students and staff members alike. The funds will also allow the expansion of ESYO’s after-school program, CHIME, which is a tuition-free afterschool music program that currently serves 170 students in the Schenectady City School District. ESYO has over 600 performers from across the Capital Region in its 14 ensembles.
District 111 Assemblyman Angelo Santabarbara said the program was an opportunity to explore the arts for students of marginalized communities and who faced socioeconomic barriers to music education.
“Programs like that that provide those opportunities – otherwise kids would be literally left out and that would be a loss for our community,” he said. “It would be a loss for us not to discover those talents and be able to provide the support that they need to explore and go on to those wonderful careers, wonderful pathways to the performing arts.”
Calos gave attendees a tour of the new music center, which will include a kitchen to provide snacks and food to CHIME students, a music library, and a lounge area where parents can wait for their children to finish their rehearsals and can listen to their children performing as well.
“You’ll be able to sit in here as a parent and put in a headset and hear what’s happening and see what’s happening in any of the studio spaces,” she said. “So as a parent coming, as we’ve all done, it’s nice not to be sitting staring at your kid, but rather be able to hear what they’re up to.”
Calos said the music center was unique in that it would be specifically designed for the students and their needs.
“Something I’ve said a lot to people when we were designing this is that students oftentimes are invited into spaces that weren’t intentionally built for that age group, like maybe it’s a music conservatory space, or it’s a space that was built for sports, but we kind of have music in it,” she said. “This space was really intentionally built for students on their journey.”
16-year-old Mia Montross is a student at Schenectady High School and a graduate of the CHIME program. Montross is a percussionist and a member of several of ESYO’s ensembles. She spoke about the difficulty of transporting her instruments to and from the buildings ESYO usually played in, and said that a space like this new music center would be transformative.
“I spend so much of my time each week in ESYO rehearsals, Sundays at Brown School, five hours minimum in rehearsals at the space after school each week, I have hours of rehearsal and Proctor’s, really ESYO, is a second home,” she said. “Being in rehearsals is where I spend so much of my free time. Having a building that is designed for that will be really incredible for everyone who comes in in the future.”
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