Encore!

If you love music—especially music of the classical variety ?and if you love kids—especially kids of the teenage variety ?you’re in for a surprising yet delightful treat.

Encore! is the amazing, often comical, but nevertheless inspiring story of the New England Youth Ensemble and their memorable adventures playing the classics before prestigious audiences the world over.

Join Virginia-Gene Rittenhouse and the talented young protégés as they play before the famous Mademoiselle Nadia Boulanger—acclaimed as the world’s greatest musician at the time—with a broken A-string on the lead viola! Arrive with the orchestra only minutes before a big concert on a dilapidated tour bus that had its radiator repaired en route with chewing gum and bars of soap.

Here Gerald Ford, while surrounded by a swarm of excited teenagers after a command performance, tell the ensemble: “You made me proud to be an American.”

From Carnegie Hall to the concert halls of the Soviet Union, these young people have left audiences standing in the aisles begging for more. And by the time you finish reading their story, you’ll be applauding too—not just for the music they play, but for the lives they live.