In the Northeastern University Symphony Orchestra, students are ‘part of something bigger’
Led by Allen Feinstein and Allison Betsold, the two ensembles that make up Northeastern University Symphony Orchestra offer students an opportunity to create music and find community.
Exultant chords and bursts of rapid notes floated up to the vaulted ceilings of the cavernous Fenway Center, a Victorian Gothic-style church-turned-performance hall on St. Stephen Street in Boston. Some 70 student musicians gathered on stage on a recent evening, immersed in the passionate fourth symphony from Robert Schumann and Igor Stravinsky’s lively neoclassical Pulcinella Suite.
You can usually find Ahyan Maya front and center in the cello section of the Northeastern University Symphony Orchestra, commonly known as NUSO. But not this evening.
This open rehearsal ushered in the start of a new NUSO season, serving as an opportunity for anyone to get acquainted with the group before committing to an audition. All members, old and new, must earn their position each year in their section and in either the larger symphonic orchestra, led by Director of Music Performance Allen Feinstein, or the smaller and more selective chamber orchestra led by Allison Betsold, Artist in Residence and director of the NU Pep Band and Concert Band.
As NUSO’s president, third-year mathematics student Maya was pulled that evening from one task to the next as he restrung a rental cello, welcomed prospective members who were unsure where to sit, and ensured the woodwinds and brass players had their sheet music from the music librarian.
His own cello was occupied by another student who didn’t yet have an instrument to play.
“As long as somebody’s played the cello, I’m fine with it,” Maya said.
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Performing challenging and musically satisfying repertoire for a live audience is a given, but another goal Maya has for this season is to build community within the program. He doesn’t want students to only show up to rehearsal and leave, but to get to know one another and create friendships.
Kabir Budlender said he was looking forward to meeting people outside of the classroom through the orchestra. The 19-year-old freshman and violinist thinks of music as inherently having a “shared social cohesion.”
“Playing individually is one thing. But to play with others feels very powerful,” he said. “It’s a feeling of adrenaline that you don’t feel elsewhere, when you play with other people because every person is important and has equal importance in shaping the sound.”
Budlender chose to attend Northeastern in part because he knew NUSO was a place he could continue playing violin.
“It’s a really critical part of my life,” said Budlender, a Johannesburg native who has lived off and on over the past few years in Brookline, Massachusetts.
He picked up the violin after watching a performance of Sergei Prokokiev’s symphonic children’s tale “Peter and the Wolf,” and ever since has been playing in orchestras and even composing his own pieces, he said. Some of his work has been performed by the KwaZulu-Natal Philharmonic Orchestra in his home country of South Africa.
While currently undecided as a major, Budlender said he wants to explore the intersection of music and health. He was diagnosed with juvenile arthritis, which affects his ability to play the violin, but is determined to stay part of the magic of music through composition or conducting as well, he said.
Feinstein and Betsold took turns conducting during the 90-minute rehearsal to give new students a sense of what to expect in their groups. Betsold conducted the Stravinsky, while Feinstein bookended it with the Schumann piece and “A Town with an Ocean View” by Joe Hisaishi, from the 1989 Studio Ghibli anime feature Kiki’s Delivery Service.
Each piece dictated how the conductors moved as they marked the tempo and entrances for the different sections. From the podium, Feinstein flowed the baton like floating a silk scarf in the air for the Romantic-era composition, but the sharp chaos of Stravinsky’s ballet necessitated a pointed and angular dictation from Betsold.
In this first rehearsal, it’s the conductors’ job to illustrate a vision of the future in which the musicians can see themselves playing the pieces very well, even if it may not sound fully there in the current moment, Feinstein said. They want to maintain players’ confidence and battle any feelings of discouragement.
“I always try to balance doing something where they’re going to feel good about what we’ve accomplished musically in a short period of time,” he said.
It was the first time this combination of players was rehearsing together. Some had never played these pieces, while others were picking their instrument back up after a hiatus, Feinstein said.
One such moment arose while rehearsing a challenging portion of the Stravinsky. Furrowed brows and flustered fingers gave way to the musical structure falling apart in unison. Rather than being frustrated, the players laughed and, at Betsold’s direction, tried again.
If history was any indication, like last year’s “triumphant” season closer, Betsold was confident the group would get there. “You’ll be blown away by the transformation,” she said.
Conducting these groups is as fulfilling to Feinstein as he hopes it is to the students.
“If I can facilitate that by introducing them to some great art that has been created that we have to recreate – it doesn’t exist unless we do that work – that’s exciting,” he added.
Aleah Inoue and Ariel Chang, violinists who are members of NUSO executive board, remember being scared attending their first open rehearsal. They didn’t know anyone and wondered if it would be an intense environment. But they fought through nerves and soon realized it was a fun, welcoming and non-judgmental place.
For Inoue, a 19-year-old nursing student, she joined NUSO because she felt that giving up her instrument would be doing a disservice to the decade she’s spent practicing and performing.
“I just wanted to keep playing music. This is my only opportunity to keep my fingers moving,” she said.
Chang, a fourth-year student who is studying economics with a music minor, said it’s understandable if people lose the passion to continue playing after high school. But she missed classical music and felt empowered when playing with the group, like she did while performing Antonín Dvořák’s New World Symphony last year.
“You get to feel like you’re a part of something bigger,” she said.
When rehearsal ended, Maya asked the group to stay behind and participate in an icebreaker, a game of human bingo to help the musicians mix and mingle with prompts like finding someone who is in a different major or seeking out someone who is new to the group.
The space that was once filled with the vibrations from instruments reverberated with conversation and laughter.
“I’m happy it worked,” Maya said.
NUSO will perform its Children’s Concert at the Fenway Center on Oct. 18 at 3:30 p.m.; its 2026 Winter Concert on Dec. 4 at 8 p.m.; and its 2027 Spring Concert on April 24 at 6 p.m.
