The future of music was on full display for all to hear. Eight gifted teenage string players – four Arab and four Jewish – performed with the NYO-USA during Carnegie’s World Orchestra Week (WOW! Festival), the first in its history. Led by renowned conductor Marin Alsop, the extraordinary 110-member orchestra played Barber’s First Symphony, Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade, and, to mark the work’s centennial, Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, with pianist Jean-Yves Thibaudet as soloist. Truly a wow experience, Polyphony musicians met teenagers from youth orchestras across the globe. The performance followed an intensive two-week training residency. Two Polyphony musicians– Dana Ileimi and Laila Haimovich–were interviewed by the New York Times for an article about the festival. You can also read reviews of the NYO-USA performance in the New York Classical Review and of each orchestra performing at WOW.