By Anne Levin

The Greater Princeton Youth Orchestra (GPYO) has announced an agreement with Rider University to establish a home base on the campus of Westminster Choir College. The three-year agreement allows the GPYO to hold rehearsals and training, and set up administrative offices in Westminster’s Cullen Center, including Hillman Hall, the Robert Annis Playhouse, multiple rehearsal rooms, and office space in Williamson Hall.

Following in the footsteps of American Repertory Ballet and Music Together, the GPYO is the latest cultural organization to make use of the Westminster facilities. The campus has been mostly empty since Rider, which merged with Westminster three decades ago, moved the choir college to its Lawrence Township location in 2020. Westminster Conservatory, the community music school, has remained on the campus since the choir college was moved.

The agreement “expands on an earlier partnership whereby the Westminster Conservatory and GPYO extended joint opportunities for students to learn and perform music,” reads a press release about the deal. The organization’s five ensembles had outgrown their previous locations at the Unitarian Universalist Church and All Saints’ Church, both in Princeton.

“It has been a three-year process to get us onto the campus,” said GPYO Executive Director Joseph Capone, who happens to be a 2004 graduate of the choir college. “I’m four offices down from where I started. It feels good to be home.”

Capone and colleagues from the GPYO were exploring the move when COVID-19 changed everything. “On March 16, 2020, we were taking a tour of the campus for this, and that’s the day the world shut down,” Capone said. “So that was that.”

Before COVID-19, the GPYO had approximately 80 students. That number dropped to about 33 during the pandemic. Today, some 200 students are registered.

“It became critical for us to have this happen,” Capone said. “We have grown very quickly in a short period of time, and we have to make sure we’re not burning our staff out. We are looking to continue to expand our work and what we’re doing. We already had a relationship with the Conservatory, which is important.”

Capone attributes the jump in enrollment to two factors. “It’s the quality of the music education,” he said. “It also has to do with the fact that a number of our peer organizations just didn’t survive the pandemic. People were starving for that in-person contact again. In any school, choir, and orchestra, the numbers are down. We are an opportunity for them to perform with other musicians or by themselves.”

The GPYO was founded at Trenton Central High School more than six decades ago. It has five divisions: the Symphonic Orchestra, Concert Orchestra, Chamber Winds Ensemble, Camerata Strings Ensemble, and Preparatory Strings. All ensembles rehearse weekly on Monday evenings, and perform at least two to three concerts a year. The students also have access to master classes with professional musicians, sectionals, workshops, and a concerto competition.

All of the students are required to be enrolled in their school’s music program. Most also take private lessons, either at Westminster Conservatory or private studios.

Capone is hoping to include more students from outside Princeton in the orchestra’s programs. “We already have a very diverse population in our ensembles, but sometimes there is the mentality that ‘Oh, you’re in Princeton, everybody [who lives there] can afford you.’ That’s not the case,” he said. “I’m looking to increase our awareness of that, and the ability to assist students. Any child who is interested and wants to play should not be turned away because they can’t afford it. I feel very strongly about that, and I know the board does as well.”

Rider has been trying to sell the 22-acre Princeton campus for the past several years, and the future of the site is still to be determined. Asked what would happen to the GPYO if the campus is sold, Capone said there is no contingency plan. “We have a three-year agreement. We would work with the new landlord to either maintain our presence on site, or else we would be back in the situation we were in before,” he said.

The first gathering of students and their families at the GPYO’s new location is Monday, September 11. “It’s very exciting,” Capone said. “There is a big difference between rehearsing and teaching young musicians in a space that’s meant for teaching music as opposed to one that is not.”