Ward Melville Musicians to Perform at Carnegie Hall on Saturday

The world famous Carnegie Hall stage will be filled with musicians from the Three Village area on Saturday, May 19th as the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra performs its annual concert.

This year the featured soloist is Ward Melville High School junior Madeleine Vaillancourt, who will be performing the final two movements of Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E Minor. A Carnegie Hall debut at the young age of 17 is a dream come true for Madeleine, one made possible by winning first place in the Metropolitan Youth Orchestra's annual concerto competition. The opportunity is all the more thrilling as she will be playing with many of her friends from school who play in the orchestra.

Three Village students performing in the orchestra at Carnegie Hall on Saturday include Kathryn Barnitt, Kaitlynne Cunningham, Dafni Frohman, Zachary Lerman, Edward Liu, Nick O'Brien, Tyla Axelrod, Danielle Diamond, Nick Thornton, Adam Goldberg, and Sonya Li. Mounting the conductor's podium at Carnegie Hall will be none other than our own Phil Preddice, recently retired after many years as Musical Director at Ward Melville High School.

Madeleine has been studying the violin since she was six years old and is currently a student of Nurit Pacht at the Lucy Moses School in New York City. She is a member of the Ward Melville High School Chamber Orchestra, under the direction of Alisa Rabbitt, and a student in the Advanced Placement Music Theory course taught by Dr. Daniel Deutsch. Last summer Madeleine was a semi-finalist in the Cooper International Violin Competition at Oberlin Conservatory, and this summer she will attend the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado.