Photograph by Dylan Firlie
National Youth Orchestra, or NYO Jazz, is Carnegie Hall’s prestigious summer jazz program, selecting young jazz musicians from across the country to train under acclaimed artists and showcase their talents in an international musical tour. This year, only 22 musicians, ranging from ages 16 to 19, were chosen to partake in the program. And out of these 22, only one musician on the roster was selected from Ohio: Cadence Okuwobi, a 16-year-old double bass player and rising senior at Walnut Hills High School.
Carnegie Hall considers members of NYO Jazz to be some of the finest jazz musicians in America. More than 120 alumni of the NYO programs are now part of professional orchestras or ensembles, including the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Orchestra, The Cleveland Orchestra, and the Saturday Night Live band. The audition process reflects the esteemed selection of musicians that are chosen to tour each summer.
The audition required eight video submissions of different arrangements and two supplemental essays, and Okuwobi spent long hours—about a month, she says—preparing for her final videos, which she recorded at the Cincinnati Jazz Academy.
The chance to audition (applicants must be at least 16 years to apply) was a long time coming for Okuwobi. She began her music career at 5 years old, but she didn’t initially start with the bass—or even jazz. “I played piano first and then cello, but I wasn’t really serious about either of those,” she says.
Her introduction to jazz and the upright bass began at the Cincinnati Jazz Academy, and she recalls the support it provided for her to excel as a budding musician. “The former director of the Jazz Academy and the founder, Dr. Rudnick, he was the head of music programs for [Cincinnati Public Schools]. When he found me in fourth grade, I was playing cello, classical cello, and he invited me to come join the Jazz Academy on cello,” says Okuwobi. “Then some years later, he asked me to switch to bass, and they provided me my first instrument, all my lessons for free, and then gave me all the ensembles that I needed to progress.”
For Okuwobi, it was meant to be. “The first time I started playing an upright bass, I was just like, ‘Something feels right about it.’… It was kind of immediately falling in love.”
By 13, she began a career as a gigging bass player in Cincinnati, and since then, she has played alongside and learned from a slew of local jazz artists. “I think the jazz community in Cincinnati is so great. Every older musician has been so supportive of me,” says Okuwobi. “My mentor is Myles Twitty, who’s a local trumpet player, and he’s really encouraged me and inspired me to step up my game in terms of playing.”
Also around that age, Okuwobi began dreaming of taking part in NYO Jazz. “I’ve been wanting to audition for the National Youth Orchestra since I was probably 13, and this is the first year I’ve been eligible to apply,” she says. “I was already kind of familiar with the audition requirements. When I looked at them for this year, I was just like, ‘Okay, I’m going to choose all the hardest possible music I can, just see if I can do it.’”
The program itself demands a young musician to push themselves to the limits. It began with two weeks of workshops, masterclasses, and experimenting with a variety of jazz arrangements from mid-to-late July at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
“The band director, Kris Johnson, in rehearsals, he’s very efficient, and everybody already learned their music, so it was very easy to get through,” says Okuwobi. “The faculty were very helpful to bring out new things in your playing. They really encouraged me to be more confident and just play what I’m hearing, and not necessarily what’s on the music.”
Such training includes instrument sectionals with the program faculty, full band rehearsals, and jam sessions with members of NYO-USA and NYO2, Carnegie Hall’s classical national youth ensembles. Alongside the rigorous practice sessions, they allot time for meditation sessions, a running club, games, movie nights, ice cream socials, and the opportunity to attend a concert or club date in NYC or at the Caramoor Center for Music and the Arts, as leisurely activities.
Okuwobi hasn’t just learned from the variety of mentors that lead the summer program, but also from the peers who have been chosen to play alongside her. “Getting to know all 21 other musicians—they’re all fantastic musically—but just personality, there’s some of the most intelligent people I’ve ever met,” says Okuwobi. “Everybody’s always practicing, and everybody’s always creating. The other day, we were just like, ‘Oh, it’s a beautiful day.’ So everybody went outside with their computers, and we were just composing on the lawn.”
NYO Jazz’s opening concert, held at Carnegie Hall on August 1, had a special appearance from Grammy Award-winning singer Dee Dee Bridgewater. The group performed songs commissioned by Korean American composer Jihye Lee and NYO Jazz alum Skylar Tang. They also played a range of big band favorites, genre-crossing contemporary works, and new arrangements written by band director Johnson and John Clayton for the ensemble.
The international tour began in San Francisco on August 4. Next, they’re going international, performing in Taichung, Shanghai, and Beijing from August 8 to 14. The NYO Jazz musicians will also participate in a peer-to-peer program throughout their time in Asia, where they will rehearse alongside the Taichung Youth Orchestra for jazz. “Even regionally, everybody’s [jazz] sound and playing style is different, so I’m excited to see what it looks like in different places in the world,” says Okuwobi.
According to NYO Jazz, its “diverse repertoire showcases big band jazz as a limitless art form, one that bridges genres, generations, and borders,” and this overseas experience allows young musicians to showcase the living legacy and next generation of American jazz musicians.
For Okuwobi, though, this is just the beginning of her career as a bassist, and her music continues in other endeavors such as her Beyond the Notes Workshop program, where she teaches professional skills to young jazz musicians, and her own band that performs at the Pleasant Ridge Goodfellas every second and fourth Tuesday of the month.
“I just want to be in a band that’s moving the music forward,” says Okuwobi. “A lot of the time, jazz is pickup jazz, so you’re calling different people every single time. I really want to be in a band that’s the same for like multiple years, so that we can learn and grow together; that’s writing their originals, doing really cool things with compositions and arrangements.”
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