Using his two passions for travel and classical music, he founded the Long Island Youth Orchestra around the world and conducted student musicians in front of audiences such as Great Neck, Brookville, Karachi and Kathmans. Witz has passed away. On June 20, he was 91 years old at a hospital near his home in Oyster Bay, NY.
Stephen Behr, chairman of the orchestra’s board of directors, said the cause was a heart attack.
The orchestra may have counted about 100 performers, but Dreiwitz (pronounced DRY-witz) was virtually a single show: he raised money, scouted new members, and rehearsed. He advised his parents to bring a snack on that day, and he performed every performance from his founding in 1962 to his retirement in 2012.
He was also an orchestra travel agency. In addition to holding four concerts a year at the Performance Hall on the Long Island University Post campus in Brookville, New York, the orchestra took part in a summer tour. One trip in 1977 went to Greece, Kenya, Seychelles, India, Sri Lanka and Israel, with details arranged by Drewitz.
Although he was trained as a classic clarinetist, he is actually a trade agency and a complex that can use his skills and connections to shrink even a professional orchestra. I planned a trip. He takes pride in being one of the first Western orchestras to perform in places like Pakistan and Nepal, and performed sold-out shows with students who never left Long Island.
He treated the musician like an adult and thought his mission was less about pedagogy than preparing for a professional music career. He avoided the typical youth orchestra fare, Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man, Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings, Mozart and Rossini, and Virgil Thomson (personal friends). He favored avant-garde composers like (a personal friend who may be). He used the orchestra to test run his latest work).
He also tended to avoid Broadway scores, but had George Gershwin’s music, especially the soft spots of “Porgy and Bess,” and often included a selection from that opera in the orchestra’s summer tours. ..
Dreiwitz saw travel as another form of preparation. He argued that it was important for up-and-coming violists and clarinet players to learn how to perform best in front of strange new places, strange new cities, and strange new audiences.
But he also loved the challenge of planning a five-week trip to 85 students across five East Asian countries. Between fundraising and rehearsals, he embarked on a reconnaissance trip during the school year and scouted each site for his next tour — arrange a hotel (or just as often a private home) and check the venue. , Taste the restaurant. When the students arrive, after a few months, everything will be perfect.
The orchestra was running on a small budget, especially early on, when Drewitz refused to charge the tuition fees. Instead, the money came from his family’s donations, annual candy sales, and often from his own pocket. Each spring, he offered a $ 2,500 scholarship split among the three best high school seniors, as judged by an external panel.
Mr. Drawitz’s efforts have paid off. The orchestra’s 4,000 (and counting) graduates continue to perform at many of the major domestic companies, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic, and the Philadelphia Orchestra, in countless chamber music groups and academic music departments. I belong to.
Although Drewitz was able to tighten the podium, many of his ex-musicians said he ran the orchestra like a family, creating a collegial atmosphere rather than a competitive atmosphere.
“I don’t twist anyone’s arm to get involved,” he told the New York Times in 1964. I don’t think you can find such a group of enthusiastic musicians anywhere. “
Martin Charles Dreiwitz was born on June 15, 1931 in Weehawken, New Jersey, and grew up in Brooklyn. His father, Samuel Dravenitz, worked in the fur industry, and his mother, Charlotte (Silver) Dravenitz, was a housewife.
He is survived by his two sons, Tuan Dinh and Dung Dinh.
A talented musician since childhood, he played the clarinet, graduated from Manhattan Music Arts High School (now Fiorello H. Lagardia Music Arts High School), and majored in music at Chicago University. In the process, he studied with celebrities in woodwinds such as Simeon Bellison, the main clarinetist of the New York Philharmonic, and Anthony Griotti, who held the same position in the Philadelphia Orchestra.
After graduating from college in 1953, he moved to Europe, where he studied to become a conductor, including a stint with Wilhelm Furtwängler in Vienna.
He returned to the United States in the early 1960s and settled in the suburbs of Long Island hoping to work. To achieve his goals, he took on the job of a travel agency and offered private clarinet lessons on his side.
One day in 1962, one of his particularly talented students laid down his instrument and frowned.
“I’ve reached this point,” Dreiwitz recalled the student. “And now I have to wait years before I get into a major orchestra before I get some really good experiences. Where are you going from here?”
The seeds were sown and settled. Drewitz held an audition in September 1962, originally known as the North Shore Symphony Orchestra. He started with only 52 musicians and held a concert the following spring. A few years later, he took them on their first trip to Chicopee, Massachusetts.
It stopped in the early days when Dreiwitz hit a music teacher in Nassau County and found a promising player. But by the end of the 1960s, he no longer had to. Avid students lined up outside his travel agency for auditions, and every year he had a waiting list. The orchestra went on its first overseas trip to Europe in 1971.
He became an emeritus professor in 2012 and handed the baton to former student Scott Dann. He continued to participate in rehearsals at LIU Post, but less frequently and never at all.
But Dreiwitz had another hurray. In 2018, hundreds of graduates returned to the concert in honor of him, and he was on the podium, selecting from his beloved Porgy and Bess.