Performances + Events
For Kai Waynen ’26 Prep, ’30, New England Conservatory’s Preparatory School has provided community, inspiration, and an opportunity to develop “a sense of leadership.” Waynen, a violinist, has progressed through several of NEC Prep’s orchestras and played in various chamber groups. Though his family lives at least an hour and a half from NEC, they agree that the Prep experience has been well worth the drive.
The most valuable part of the experience, since Waynen first attended NEC Prep in 2017, has been the community. “The amazing faculty,” he said, have been inspirational, as has being around NEC College students. “Seeing older people playing,” he said, “is super motivating.”
Building community is hugely important to Juliano Aniceto, director of NEC Prep’s orchestras.
“Everybody needs community,” Aniceto said, adding, “There’s a lot to say about the social aspect of an orchestra.”
Music, he said, “is about sharing,” and in choosing repertoire for the Prep orchestras, Aniceto is eager to introduce younger musicians to compositions that “everybody should have in their repertoire” and to works that might be new to them and their audiences.
In the 2026–2027 season, NEC Prep’s Junior Repertory Orchestra, Youth Repertory Orchestra, Youth Symphony, and Youth Philharmonic — symphonic groups fed by the program’s training ensembles — will perform familiar works by Beethoven, Brahms, Dvořák, Mendelssohn, Mussorgsky, Ravel, Rossini, and Tchaikovsky, along with operatic selections.
In addition to canonical repertoire, the orchestras will perform works by Mexican composer Arturo Márquez, Russian composer Anatoly Lyadov, and American composers Florence Price, an NEC alumna, and John Williams, whose film scores, Aniceto said, illustrate “how music can really shape imagination,” alongside compositions by Henrique Alves de Mesquita, Antônio Carlos Gomes, and Edu Lobo — all composers from Aniceto’s native Brazil.
It’s a “group development experience,” Aniceto said of each Prep orchestra, one in which individuals need to be united” in their musical goal. That, in itself, is a powerful lesson to impart. And, “the more disciplined they are in orchestra,” he said, “the freer they are to express themselves,” and to do so with excellence. “It’s fun to be excellent,” Aniceto said, “and it’s even more fun to be excellent together.”
“The orchestras help with team building,” Waynen agreed. “You have to work together.” As part of the Youth Philharmonic Orchestra’s concertmaster rotation, he’s also experienced “a sense of leadership.”
Those lessons and others led him from one Prep orchestra to the next and, ultimately, to NEC’s College, where he’ll enroll in the fall.
NEC was Waynen’s “top choice,” he said. Reflecting on his time in NEC Prep, he said “it’s definitely a pipeline to higher musical education.”
NEC Preparatory School’s Youth Philharmonic Orchestra will perform a Concert for the City on May 16, at 4 p.m., at the Department of Conservation and Recreation’s Edward A. Hatch Memorial Shell. Learn more.
