Courtesy of Phoenix Symphony
Audio By Carbonatix
When he interviews and auditions for Northern Arizona University’s Kitt School of Music this month, Logan Phares, 18, of Anthem, can say a leading symphony has already performed one of his works.
The Phoenix Symphony, side-by-side with the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, will perform Phares’s “Au Revoir Mon Amour” Symphony No. 1 on Wednesday, March 25, at the Mesa Center for the Arts. Tickets are $24.75 for adults, $9.75 for ages 10 and under.
As part of its community education and engagement mission, the Symphony chose five new works by youth composers to bring to the stage this season. This marks the first time the general public can attend a concert featuring one.
When he found out his piece was chosen, Phares, a Boulder Creek High School senior, said he was “breathless.”
“I was jumping up and down; I was texting my friends,” he says. “I was so excited, and I still am.”
Courtesy of Phoenix Symphony
Student works take the stage
The Phoenix Symphony Student Composition Project began during the 2023-24 season, when a Phoenix Youth Symphony Orchestra member, Yola Svoma of Tempe — only 11 at the time — approached the associate conductor with a piece she’d written.
The Symphony included the work in its repertoire for eight student field trips the next season.
“We saw a lovely connection that happened when students saw another student on stage,” says Valerie Bontrager, the Symphony’s vice president of community engagement and education. “It becomes very human that these are people behind these compositions.”
From there, the Symphony developed the program to solicit works from youth composers throughout the Valley. The pieces had to be two to six minutes long and require anywhere from four players up to a mid-size orchestra with any instrument configuration. More than a dozen students submitted work.
After Phares’s four-minute symphony on March 25, three student works will be performed during the “Northern Lights Adventure” at Madison Center for the Arts at 2 p.m. on May 9.
They include “Gilgamesh Symphony No. 1” by Dylan French of Corona del Sol High School in Chandler, “Ombra e Luce Symphony No. 1” by Israel Kim of Phoenix, who is a homeschooled high schooler, and “Imitation of Prokofievâs Fifth Symphony No. 2” by Svoma of Tempe, a homeschooled middle-schooler.
The Symphony performed a fifth work — “Karna Symphony No. 1” by Nevin Atodaria of Phoenix, who attends Brophy College Preparatory — during two Symphony for the Schools field trips last fall and will perform it again at field trips on April 30 and May 12.
While other orchestras have youth education programs, Phoenix Symphony CEO Peter Kjome says it’s “powerful and unusual” to have student compositions brought to life by a nationally recognized orchestra.
Kjome added that this is also part of a wide-ranging effort to remain relevant and appeal to a wide range of audiences. In addition to showcasing these up-and-comers, it programs the music of blockbuster films, best-selling pop stars and even rap artists.
Emily Miller
‘D&D,” doom metal and classics
Phares has been composing music since the seventh grade, when he was inspired by the way a “Dungeons & Dragons” story was unfolding and wanted to create a piece of music to mirror it. His piano teacher, Bill Miller, told him to write something for the fun of it.
“It sounded really bad, (but) he was so proud of me,” Phares recalls.
Ever since then, he adds, “I’ve just really loved to write music, and I just wanted to become really good at it, because it was a way for me to get my thoughts out, in a way.”
Phares, who gave up the piano and now plays the trombone, began studying composition and music theory with Miller, a self-published composer. He also credits instructors Joshua Burrola, Michael Warner and Mike Tuttle for their guidance.
The piece he submitted to the symphony was formed out of what Phares laughs was a stereotypical teenage moment: He broke up with his first girlfriend.
“At the end, I realized that everything’s going to be OK,” he says.
Phares, who listens to everything from doom metal like SubRosa and Faetooth to 2000s rock and a “jumble” of classical music, says he thinks Timothée Chalamet, who got serious blowback recently for saying “no one cares” about ballet and opera, was off base. (Side note: The Phoenix Symphony’s brand-new music director designate, Paolo Bortolameolli, is also the music director of the Ópera Nacional de Chile.)
“I have countless friends who love classical music, love ballet, love every one of these classical arts,” Phares states.
He adds, “There are so many people who love these classical works, and I don’t believe any of them will ever die. They might shift, but they will never go away. There will always be someone who loves them, and someone to perform them, and someone to go watch them.”