By Dr Luis Dias
Fresh auditions for India National Youth Orchestra (INYO) will be held all over the country this month. Renowned conductor Vijay Upadhyaya, founder of INYO will be in Goa on February 14 and 15 to audition and select young talent for further training, and to induct them into the orchestra. 

Upadhyaya, who grew up in Lucknow, is now settled in Austria where he is conductor of the Vienna University Choir and Orchestra, and the Vienna Star Choir and Orchestra. He fits the description of globe-trotting baton-wielder, with a hectic schedule spanning Europe, Asia, North and South America.
He has conducted several choirs and orchestras in Austria and abroad, among them the Graz University Choir and Orchestra, Thirteen Strings Canada, the Boston Sinfonietta, USA and the Borusan Orchestra in Turkey. He is also a visiting professor for conducting at the Conservatories of Tbilisi (Georgia), Almaty (Kazakhstan), Chengdu and Beijing (China). He has also directed music projects in Iran, Indonesia, Singapore, Brazil and East Timor.
So what prompted this Indian venture? “There are so many young people learning and playing instruments across India, but there’s no sense of continuity to what they’re doing. It is done up to school or college age, then they get into mainstream professions and it gets lost. This could be a motivation, I thought, to start off a real Indian orchestra, for a first generation.”
The idea had long been forming in Upadhyaya’s mind, and began to take shape two years ago. Auditions for the orchestra first took place in January 2011. Interestingly, he recalls, the standard was higher among the younger aspirants, peaking at ages 12-14. 
Since the first meeting of the INYO at Kolkata, which included a workshop with a concert at the end, there have been several acclaimed concerts in Delhi as well. The first was an Indo-German collaboration in May 2011 to mark the opening ceremony of “Germany and India 2011-2012: Infinite Opportunities” in the presence of German Chancellor Angela Merkel and other dignitaries. A few months later, in November, an Indo-Italian joint venture saw a stage production of Pietro Mascagni’s ‘Cavalleria Rusticana’ as the closing act of the Delhi International Arts Festival. Evidently the orchestra has come a long way in a short time.
Upcoming projects are a workshop in Bengaluru over the Easter school break, which will focus on technique and finer points required in ensemble playing. This will also culminate in a concert at the city’s Chowdiah hall on April 10, 2012. In an arrangement with the National Youth Orchestra of Canada, four musicians from the INYO will be chosen for intensive training there later this year, with a view to them forming the core group of section leaders of their instrument in the India orchestra.
Upadhyaya’s music connections as a conductor with orchestras in China, Chile, and Brazil made it obvious to him how far India lags behind. “You can’t compare India with China where this is concerned. There is so much state funding for art there; you can’t imagine,” he says.
In India, the talent exists, but there has not yet been an attempt to harness this in a comprehensive manner. There are far too many obstacles in the path of any young Indian wishing to take up music seriously: A lack of quality teaching, decent employment prospects, and respectability.
The orchestra has the rich and the poor, and everyone in between, playing together. As Upadhyaya emphatically puts it, “I think it is a good thing, because the common denominator is whether you can play well or not. You can’t buy technique.”
He is aware he is being regarded by the orchestra as a role model. “If I could make it in the music world, coming from Lucknow, in the ‘80s, so can they.”
Upadhyaya will be auditioning young musicians (strings, woodwinds, brass) on February 14 and 15 morning (reporting time 9.45 am) at Kala Academy. To enrol and for further details, please contact 9011051950, 9975858285 or email diasfluis@yahoo.com. Candidates will be expected to play a work of their choice and do some sight-reading.