The Laureano Legacy

On May 6, 2007, something extraordinary happened at Orchestra Hall. The Minnesota Youth Symphonies senior orchestra, the MYS Symphony, had taken their seats onstage. The cacophony of 100 kids tuning their instruments had subsided, and conductor Manny Laureano had taken his place at the podium, facing the audience, wearing the traditional conductor’s uniform: a black tux with tails.

“When the piece you are about to hear was first played in Paris in 1913, it sparked a riot,” Laureano informed the audience. “To give you an idea of what that evening might have felt like, we’re going to try to recreate it here, if only for a few moments.” He then instructed half of the audience to cheer and shout as loudly as they could in favor of the music, and half the audience to boo and hiss their outrage—all while the orchestra played.

The intended chaos ensued, but that was not the extraordinary part. Over the next thirty-four minutes, a group of high school students played Igor Stravinsky’s modernist masterpiece The Rite of Spring—a tortuous obstacle course of odd meters and devilish rhythms known in the classical music world simply as The Rite—and they played it exquisitely, with astonishing precision, walking one of music’s most treacherous tightropes with an almost eerie degree of poise and polish.

There was not a dissenter in the house that night; virtually everyone in attendance sprung to their feet as the final notes rang out. The audience clapped, whistled, and hooted their approval for a full ten minutes. Tears flowed. Looks of disbelief were exchanged. On the way out of the hall, everyone seemed to agree: Something exceptional had just happened. High school kids are not supposed to be that good.

As impressive as it was, however, the MYS Symphony’s taming of The Rite still wasn’t the most extraordinary thing that happened that night. No, perhaps the most incredible part is that this was not the first time Laureano had accomplished such a feat of musical magic. In fact, Manny Laureano and his wife, Claudette—the husband-and-wife team running Minnesota Youth Symphonies for the past twenty years—have been making such awe-inspiring moments happen on a regular basis for decades.

Star Tribune writer James Lileks met the Laureanos in the mid-1990s, after Manny called Lileks’s radio show, The Diner, with the correct answer to a trivia question on classical music. Soon thereafter, Laureano invited Lileks to emcee an MYS concert, and the Strib scribe has been doing the honors ever since. Lileks has emceed more than thirty MYS concerts over the past ten years (they play three a year), and says he is continually surprised. “We’re all accustomed to hearing kids saw away at their instruments and sounding like they’re taking things apart with power tools, but these kids—especially Manny’s group, the Symphony—are amazing. Every concert is remarkable.”

What is perhaps even more remarkable is that running MYS is the Laureanos’ side project: Manny is the Minnesota Orchestra’s lead trumpet player and Claudette teaches music at Breck School. Yet every Saturday morning, the couple arrives for rehearsal at Highland High School in St. Paul, along with several hundred bleary-eyed kids, and continues to build their legacy as one of the premier youth orchestras in the country.

They didn’t plan it this way. When the Laureanos took over the Minnesota Youth Symphonies in 1988, the program was in such disarray that participation had dropped from 300 in the late 1970s and early 1980s to a mere 56 students—barely enough for a single orchestra. Simply getting kids to show up for rehearsal was a battle. “When we arrived, a lot of the discipline had gone,” explains Manny as Claudette nods and picks up the thought. “We had kids who would show up for concerts, but not come to rehearsals. Or kids who would come to rehearsals and not bother to show up for concerts,” says Claudette, shaking her head in disbelief. “It was a nightmare.”

Not so anymore. Now more than 400 kids participate in MYS, supporting four orchestras tiered by playing ability: the String Orchestra, Philharmonic, Repertory (which Claudette conducts), and Symphony. Furthermore, the organization has embraced the Laureanos’ consistent wizardry so fully that MYS’s new marketing slogan is simply: “You’ll be amazed.”

Manny and Claudette Laureano are not Minnesotans. They are New Yorkers, and five seconds of animated conversation with either of them will tell you as much. As every MYS student knows, the couple met at the High School of Music & Art in New York City—the school upon which the movie Fame was based—though, as MYS legend goes, it was not exactly love at first sight. “I didn’t like him at all,” says Claudette matter-of-factly. “He used to sit with his feet up and interrupt the class right before the bell was about to ring with a countdown, ‘three, two, one. . . .’ I thought it was the most obnoxious thing in the world. Then one day he said hi to me in the hall and I fell in love. What can I say?”

After marrying, the couple moved to Minnesota when Manny landed a position in the Minnesota Orchestra. Since taking over their duties at MYS, however, the Laureanos have been important fixtures in the community for a generation of young musicians. Paradoxically, one of the keys to their success has been to insist on the sort of discipline and rigor that teenagers are supposed to abhor. Every child must audition for a spot each year; attendance is mandatory (more than six absences a season and you’re gone); rehearsals are no-nonsense worka-thons; and the level of musicianship required—no, expected—is increasingly high. Yet their system works, and their students rise to the occasion, concert after concert, without fail.