Press Kit
Discovery Ensemble is an exuberantly youthful chamber orchestra founded in 2008 and made up of 40 exceptional young professional musicians in their twenties from the greater Boston area. In its concerts, Discovery Ensemble presents an eclectic cross section of masterworks – some familiar, some unfamiliar – in performances that are impassioned, searching and at the highest level of technical accomplishment.
Courtney Lewis, the amazing 26-year-old conductor and founding Music Director of Discovery Ensemble, combines exacting standards with true vision and interpretative depth, as well as an infectious joy in the sheer act of making music. On more than one occasion he has been compared, by those whose musical memories go back to the early 1960s, to the young Carlos Kleiber. 
Lewis has molded Discovery Ensemble into a finely tuned, nuanced and virtuosic orchestra capable of switching from Bach to Beethoven to Stravinsky with complete stylistic assurance and a standard of playing that rivals the great European chamber orchestras. In May 2009, Osmo Vänskä appointed him Assistant Conductor and recently elevated him to Associate Conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra, so Lewis now divides his time between Minneapolis and Boston.
Unseen by the general pubic is the other side of Discovery Ensemble’s work -- an extensive program of workshops in Boston public schools and children’s concerts, all of which especially target areas that are underserved by existing musical institutions. The target area for these workshops for the past two years has been the community of Dorchester, Massachusetts where Discovery Ensemble has given interactive workshops in many area schools – bringing the music of Ligeti, Copland and Stravinsky into the children’s intimate and familiar surroundings. These programs have had an astonishing impact! Several times a year, in conjunction with each series of school workshops there are also concerts for children in the historic Strand Theatre in the Uphams Corner section of Dorchester. Over one thousand school children attend each of these morning concerts, where they experience great music played with great passion, and explained to them in a particularly dynamic and child-friendly manner.
A six minute video about the outreach work of Discovery Ensemble can be seen on the Discovery Ensemble website: http://www.discoveryensemble.com.
