How Do You Get to the Bowl? Practice

“I know so many people who are not musicians anymore but who point to music as changing their whole life,” said Zachary Smith. “Not necessarily because they were enlightened by the cultural aspects of it, but because of the sheer discipline that comes into it.”

Smith, 20, whose passion for classical music fuels his own life, is well-acquainted with the discipline needed to learn an instrument, having taken up the double bass when he was 10. He left Esperanza High School in Anaheim a year early and is now a senior at the Juilliard School in New York.

That sense of discipline and passion also burns brightly in 15-year-old cellist Bronwyn Banerdt of Woodland Hills.

“If you have a dream of becoming any kind of artist, you’re going to be met with a lot of discouragement,” she said. “But keep persevering. It doesn’t matter if you become a world-famous soloist or if you’re just playing in some little orchestra somewhere. If you’re doing what you love, you’ll be happy. That’s what music’s all about.”

A Springboard to Musical Careers

Smith and Banerdt are members of the Young Musicians Foundation’s Debut Orchestra, a Los Angeles-based “pre-professional” orchestra with a national reputation for excellence. Featuring musicians between the ages of 14 and 26, it has provided a springboard for some renowned artists: Michael Tilson Thomas, Mischa Dichter, Myung-Whun Chung and Jung-Ho Pak are alumni.

So is Lawrence Foster, who will make a guest appearance tonight with the orchestra that gave him his start as an 18-year-old conductor in 1959. He will lead Smith, Banerdt and the other Debut Orchestra musicians in Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony at the Hollywood Bowl.

Joining the orchestra in the hope-affirming choral work, with its radiant, exultant “Ode to Joy” theme, will be a stellar roster of vocalists, including soprano Meagan Miller, mezzo-soprano Teresa Brown, tenor Richard Clement, bass-baritone Dean Ely and members of the Pacific Chorale.

Neither Banerdt nor Smith--whose twin brother, Jacob, a bassoonist, is also a Debut Orchestra member--is a newcomer to public performance, but to be at the Bowl, led by Foster and playing Beethoven’s Ninth, is a triple thrill.

“You don’t [always] get a chance to play that kind of music with that caliber of musicians,” Banerdt said.

“A great conductor and an amazing piece,” Smith said, “[and] such a renowned place.”

Performing a Work That Makes You Shiver

Beethoven’s Ninth “is a great piece to commemorate an occasion for an idealistic organization like the Young Musicians Foundation,” Foster said, “and in that sense I think it’s a great thrill to do it as an alumni with them. The Ninth means so much to so many people.

“What is it about these few notes that Beethoven put together,” he mused, “that speak to so many people all over the world? It makes you kind of shiver; something rings so true about the sound of these few motifs that Beethoven [created] in his works, unlike any other composer. And this is particularly true of the Ninth.”

Foster describes his experience as musical director of the Debut Orchestra as invaluable, crediting Sylvia Kunin, founder of both the Young Musicians Foundation in 1955 and the Debut Orchestra in 1959, with giving him all his first chances. “It’s hard to say who you owe your career to, but if I had to name one person, it might be Sylvia Kunin,” he said.

Kunin--concert pianist, musicians’ mentor and fierce proponent of music in education--created and is still producing the long-running, Emmy-winning “Musical Encounter” public-television and live-performance series for young people.

Kunin, 86, finds young artists she works with today “amazingly dedicated and hard-working.” She refers to the scores of stellar artists she has helped launch over the decades as “my kids” and recalls fondly that Foster once told her that “I always made every one of them feel [that] they were special. And they still are.”

Foster, born in L.A. to Romanian parents, had studied piano from the time he was 6, because the children of Central European parents, he said, “just had to learn music.” But attending a Los Angeles Philharmonic concert at age 13--”my first full orchestral symphonic program”--was a revelation. “I decided there and then: My God, conducting, I’ve got to do this. I felt this is the way I want to make music, with the orchestra as an instrument. It was that simple.”

After the Debut Orchestra, Foster went on to become Zubin Mehta’s assistant conductor at the Philharmonic, then served as musical director at a number of orchestras around the world. He continues to conduct major international orchestras and opera companies.

Parents’ Encouragement Is of Key Importance

Smith and Banerdt both cite the importance of their parents’ interest, encouragement and support in their musical development.

In the fourth grade, Smith watched a musician demonstrate the double bass at a school assembly. The musician was 6 foot 7, and Smith was not quite 4 1/2 feet tall; nevertheless, he went home and announced that the enormous, sonorous instrument was what he wanted to play.

“A month later, I started studying with that same guy,” he says. He’s grateful to his parents for seeking out “individualized instruction” not only for him but also for his pianist sister and his bassoon-playing brother--and for “helping me lug the darned thing around.”

Banerdt was home-schooled; at 15 she has just finished her first year as a music major at Pierce College in Woodland Hills.

Her geophysicist parents were musicians in high school, and the young cellist (and her violin-playing older brother) grew up listening only to classical music. She decided the cello was her instrument when she was 5.

“It’s almost as if I haven’t had a choice about it,” she said. “I was just meant to do it. On my mother’s side, we have musicians going all the way back to Civil War times. So I guess it’s in the blood.”

BE THERE

Young Musicians Foundation’s Debut Orchestra, Hollywood Bowl. 8:30 tonight. $5-$70. (213) 480-3232; (323) 850-2000, https://www.hollywoodbowl.org.