Music education combined with community outreach is the heart and one of the most rewarding aspects of YOA.

"In the year 2003, I joined Youth Orchestra of the Americas and my life would never be the same again. YOA helped me to realize that I could live my dream." 

Isaac Casal, cello, Panamá

In addition to intense musical training, YOA musicians take part in leadership tutorials from music education specialists to prepare them as teaching artists. YOA musicians receive hands-on experience through didactic in-school and community performances, workshops and master classes with thousands of youth and families wherever the orchestra travels – often in underserved neighborhoods in inner-city and rural locations, often with audiences who are experiencing classical music for the first time in their lives.

These programs offer unique opportunities for YOA musicians to interact with local communities in circumstances they could not imagine possible – in a small church outside Montevideo, at a community center in an impoverished neighborhood of Lima, in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, a public park for low-income families on the outskirts of São Paulo, a theater filled with New York public school students from South Bronx and Harlem.

YOA musicians are role models for other youth by showing discipline, commitment and a sense of teamwork required to pursue a career in music. They inspire young audiences to strive for academic and personal excellence and become more confident, self-sufficient, involved members of their communities.

 “In Montevideo, Uruguay, I had the wonderful opportunity to give a trombone class to six young trombone players, all of whom were incredibly eager and excited to learn about their instruments. No one can ever know how much this meant to these children.”

Christopher Burns, trombone, USA