ROCHESTER, N.Y. — High school students are hitting the road and showcasing their talents across the map.

“Put in a lot of work to get here,” student Joseph Stokes said. “Studying the music and I am very excited to go to France with my friends.”

Stokes is joining several other aspiring musicians that are heading to the American Celebration of Music Festival. 

“I’m looking forward to the performances a lot because I cannot wait to share my music with the entire world,” student Henry Zhang said.

The talented students will be supporting both traditional and contemporary performances.

“We’re doing a couple of pieces by French composers,” Hochstein Youth Symphony Orchestra director Casey Springstead said. “Berlioz, a Hungarian march. We’re doing a selection from “Carmen” by Beasley. We’ve also got a Romanian Rhapsody. They come away with just experiences that they wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else, both performing and kind of culturally.”

Many students today, however, are not as lucky, as access to music education seems almost as a luxury due to budget cuts and music programs taking significant hits. According to the Arts Education Data Project, more than 2 million students in public schools do not have access to any arts education. This is an opportunity of a lifetime for many of these students, including Kaela Sova.

“I get to learn a lot of things that I can take with me into my college education, which I find really interesting and feeds into my interests,” Sova said. “But also, it teaches me how to be in a professional setting, a professional performance setting, while also traveling and having all this added stress onto it. It really helps me learn that regulation and balance between education, school education and music education.”

With nearly 70 students and 30 adults traveling to Europe, its ensemble has become both a cultural bridge and a reminder of the importance of these programs.

“It’s an extraordinary expenditure, but we’re grateful that people find enough value in it to put that money forth,” Springstead said. “We do hope that a lot of the area students will see that we go on tour and that might be something they can do if they audition and join us in the future. We don’t take that for granted at all.”

After a week of concert performances and touring around Paris, students will have finally arrived back from Europe to Rochester on April 5.