2 young Las Vegans to play Carnegie Hall

Tristin Saito was 12 when he joined his middle school orchestra because he wanted to play violin. Four years later, he’s about to play on one of the most famous stages in the world: Carnegie Hall.

“I wanted to follow my sister’s path,” said Saito, now 16, who will be a junior this fall at Nevada School of the Arts. “She’s three years younger than me and played the violin. But my director told me there weren’t enough violas and she wanted me to play that instead. Here I am, (a few) years into it and I’m going to be performing at Carnegie Hall.”

Saito will be in New York on Tuesday, performing through a summer program called NYO2, a partnership between New York’s Carnegie Hall and Miami’s New World Symphony. It’s a sister program of the National Youth Orchestra of the United States of America. The initiative focuses on recruiting young musicians from underrepresented communities in classical music, allowing them to further their study and ultimately perform on two prominent concert hall stages.

“Just performing in Carnegie Hall is every musician’s dream,” Saito said. “Especially someone like me who wants to go into music. Putting Carnegie Hall on my resume is an honor and pleasure.”

Saito will be onstage with Alex Gonzalez, originally from Las Vegas, who is a second-year New World Fellow in Miami. Gonzalez plays violin. The pair played at the New World Center in Miami on Saturday.

“The fellowship is essentially a training ground for the next generation of ensemble players in America and abroad,” Gonzalez said. “We play a normal orchestra season, which is one or two concerts per weekend with different guest conductors. We do a lot of community engagements — working with kids … the elderly. Then we do a lot of seminars where we learn different aspects of the music business.”

Through the fellowship, Gonzalez works with students, coaching them through the NYO2 program. Since leaving Las Vegas, Gonzalez studied at Eastman School of Music, Rice University and Carnegie Mellon University. In his early years of music, Gonzalez studied at Nevada School of the Arts.

“He told me I taught his younger sister a couple of times and I didn’t even realize it,” Gonzalez said with a laugh. “I subbed for a former teacher because she was out of town once or twice when I was home. I didn’t even know they were related. It’s really great to have someone from Las Vegas, and more specifically the Henderson area, in the orchestra. There aren’t a ton of classical musicians coming out of the Las Vegas area, so it’s just really nice to see that the community is still producing and hearing about music education.”

Saito is one of just 79 NYO2 musicians, chosen from more than 600 applicants to participate in the program.

According to Sarah Johnson, chief education officer and director of Carnegie Hall’s Weill Music Institute, the partnership comes at an important time in classical music, as many orchestras face a lack of diversity in members.

“If we want to address that, we have to start at a much earlier point,” Johnson said. “Carnegie Hall believes that everyone should have access to great music education opportunities and we know that there is an inequity across the country in terms of having that. We believe that it’s partially our responsibility to provide access whenever we can.”

Contact Mia Sims at msims@reviewjournal.com. Follow @miasims___ on Twitter.