An esteemed musician and conductor, he returned to Las Vegas to lead one of the few tuition-free professional training youth orchestras in the country.

Yunior Lopez is our guest this week on Nevada Week In Person.

♪♪ Support for Nevada Week In Person is provided by Senator William H. Hernstadt.

♪♪♪ -Welcome to Nevada Week In Person.

I'm Amber Renee Dixon, and what you just saw and heard was the Dr. Shirley Linzy Young Artists Orchestra of Las Vegas performing Tchaikovsky's Symphony No.

4.

The orchestra is celebrating its 10th anniversary, and its founder got his start right here in Las Vegas, winning a contract with the Las Vegas Philharmonic at just 17 years old.

A highly sought after chamber musician and conductor as well as an arts advocate and educator, Yunior Lopez, thank you for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you for having me.

-What do you think when you see that video?

(Yunior Lopez) That was a few weeks ago, and it's pretty exciting.

This, this whole program was-- I see it as my baby.

So now that we're celebrating 10 years, it's like a culmination of all the hard work and effort that we've put in through that period.

-Now you say it's exciting, but you're not smiling.

[laughter] -Well, I mean, it's, I am very proud, and it's just because it's exciting, you know, seeing the outcome of what we're able to achieve and the incredible things that youth can do when they're pushed, right?

But, I mean, it's, yeah, I'm not smiling.

How about now?

-Okay.

-I'm happy.

-Well, I mean, it's probably taken a lot of hard work to get to 10 years.

-Yeah.

And I never, when I started it in 2015, I never thought, well, this is-- there wasn't this plan of specifics as to how we were going to get there or how it was going to grow.

But, you know, we really understood that it's all really about seeing our youth develop and achieve great things.

So I'm very, very happy with what we've become.

-Perhaps you're a little bit more serious because of the discussion we were having ahead of us taping, which was about the National Endowment for the Arts.

You received notification that some of your funding is getting cut.

-Mm-hmm.

-That's hard to hear.

I mean, what impact will that have?

-Well, you're not going to see a smile from me regarding that.

Well, look, for us, we're a tuition-free program.

And it's been like that since the very beginning.

That was really part of our founding, and it was, it was sort of based on my experience, my childhood, like growing up in Las Vegas.

I really understood that there are youth who are limited based on, you know, their family's financial standing and so forth, and sometimes youth are kept from participating in certain programs that allows them to develop and achieve great things because of money.

And I didn't want money to really get in the way of that.

And so for us, we start with, you know, we don't expect that money to begin with, as far as tuition goes, so we have to fundraise, we have to get grants, and we also have-- our model, really, is based on ticket sales.

The public, if you really want this, come out to our concerts.

But the thing you're talking about, you know, our program is so special that we've gotten support from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Nevada Arts Council, pretty much every year since we were eligible.

-And so in a sense, we sort of expect the support because of how unique the program is and what it stands for.

So getting that notification does not make us happy.

I think the community is not going to be happy about it.

And this idea sort of that, you know, that maybe the community or other people should pick up the tab, that doesn't make sense to me.

What makes sense to me is that we all pay taxes and so forth and that, you know, the National Endowment is there to really make sure that creativity thrives nationwide and that there are programs, even aside from ours, there are programs from younger students all the way up for them to really express themselves, develop as they grow and really become great human beings that are part of society.

And that's what, that's what it's for.

-What did you find that music provided you as a youth?

-It's an outlet.

It was a great way for me to express myself.

And people don't realize music is a complicated thing.

It's a very imperfect-- I sort of look at it as something that's hard to explain, because, you know, we grow up looking at notes on a page, and it's our job to interpret those notes and bring something to life.

A lot of it is interpreting music, but a lot of it is really your creativity as an individual, right, having your own voice.

And for me, growing up in Las Vegas, it was a major outlet for me, and I got to say, it allowed me to better myself and, and see a future.

And a lot of times we're used to-- we look at musicians and say, well, you know, anybody can be a musician.

Or we could say that musicians don't make a living, and so forth.

That was never the case for me.

I looked at music as something that I loved to do, and I have an incredible career that I'm very happy with.

-And for me, it was, it really was a way for me to better myself, my family, and move forward.

-I know you're a conductor.

You're used to moving your hands, but when you hit your chest like that, it hits the mic, and so it's going to make a funky noise.

-Uh-oh.

Did I do it?

-You did.

Hey, it's okay.

You're passionate.

Tell me more about your childhood, though, because you were raised in Las Vegas but born in Cuba.

-Yeah, I was born in Havana.

And my family-- my mother, she-- there came a time when she looked at society in Havana and said, You know, I want a better life for my, for my kids.

And at the time, my parents were actually doing quite well in Havana.

However, in 1992, '91-'92, the Soviet Union fell, and they quickly realized that there was going to have some major implications on Havana.

And Cuba really was dependent on the Soviet Union, right?

Two communist nations, one obviously a lot bigger than the other, and they really, my family came together and said, you know, we need to have a plan to get out of here.

We need to find a better life.

And there-- what they did was they had this restaurant that was, at the time in Cuba, illegal, but they had this whole plan where the police was also protecting the restaurant, and they were able to get enough money to buy two speed boats to head to Florida.

It's a 90-mile trip.

Unfortunately, long story short, we got stuck in the middle of the ocean, and we were rescued.

I believe it was the US Navy or Coast Guard that picked us up and took us to Guantanamo Bay.

And from there, there was a-- -Whoa.

-Yeah, it's a crazy story.

But you know, we were there for about seven months.

-How old were you?

-I was five, five or six.

-Do you remember much?

-Very little.

-What do you remember?

-The actual experience of that, I don't.

I do remember a little of being in Guantanamo, and we have, you know, photos of our time there.

And the law-- -What do you remember about it?

-A lot of dirt.

It was basically, it's a military base, you know?

And we were there while our paperwork was being processed.

We received asylum.

And after seven months, we were flown into the US.

And now, as complicated as that story is, my grandfather had been living in the US.

He was a US citizen since the '70s.

-Okay.

-But my grandmother, who is black, who was black, she passed away, she-- when she received an invitation letter to bring all the kids over, my grandmother refused.

She did not want to come to the US.

And because she was black, she was afraid of there being racism, not as if Cuba doesn't have racism, but she was, she was just very concerned.

And I think overall, she was probably just afraid of change.

-Okay.

-And she decided to stay.

-And as a result-- -And a result, I was born.

-Okay.

-So I'm very thankful for my grandmother.

-We are getting close to the end of time already for this interview, but I'm going to fast-forward, because we've spoken off camera.

You came, I believe you were originally in California, correct?

-Yep.

-And then your step-father got a job in construction in the '90s here in Vegas.

That's how you ended up here.

How do you go from that to getting a contract with the Las Vegas Philharmonic at 17?

-Oh, yeah, I remember that.

So I'm a very competitive person, maybe too competitive.

-You said your wife tells you that all the time.

-Yeah.

My wife also thinks I'm a workaholic.

That's a separate issue.

But when I was 17 years old, my father, he was very pushy, and he questioned what my career would be.

He really wondered how successful I could be, and one day there was this job posting for Section Viola for the Las Vegas Philharmonic.

And I said, I'm going to take that job, and I'm going to win it.

And I believe, I think there might have been 22 violas that were there auditioning.

-How long had you been playing that instrument at that time?

-At that time, six years.

There was not a lot of time.

It's, we have students in YAO and who have been playing since they were four or five.

-Young Artists Orchestra.

Really?

-Yeah.

Oh, yeah, it's normal for people to start playing, you know, at five or six and, you know, it's a long-term process.

But for me, I started in the 6th grade, like most students in our community, right?

But I worked really hard, and for me, I went in there with the idea that I was going to win, and I won.

-What was your father's reaction?

-You would have thought he would have been super happy or excited, but he was one of these guys that was, you know, didn't show a lot of emotion, and he was, he was very dry.

But I could tell he was, he was proud.

I got to say what he was happy for, really, was that I had-- I could pay my own car insurance, my own gas.

I could pay my own bills, and he didn't have to pay for them.

That was probably his mentality.

-Which is part of why you chose to study in Canada, right, was money?

-Money.

I mean, it's-- they gave me such an incredible offer that I studied for six years in Toronto.

I love Toronto.

It's a great city.

And I graduated with no debt.

So that's hard to beat that, you know?

-Yeah.

-And I got to study at one of the world's best music schools.

And starting a career with no debt is, you know, very important.

-You got a lucky break there, right?

-Oh, yeah.

Right time, right place.

-Someone got fired.

-Yeah.

-You were allowed to conduct at a very young age, right?

-I got super lucky, where the conducting, the professor of conducting becomes the head of the entire-- he takes over all the orchestras at the Conservatory.

And there was a job for the precollege orchestra just under him.

There were seven orchestras at the time.

This was the one, you know, the talented youth who were not at the college level, but right below it.

And I get called to the dean's office one day, and they just said, Hey, we think you can do this job.

Do you want it?

And I, I was surprised, because I was still a student, and my first question was, are you going to pay me?

You know, I'm not going to do it for free.

And they did.

They took very good care of me, and that really helped kick-start my career.

-Yeah.

-That opportunity was very impactful.

-We're glad you came back to Las Vegas.

There's so much more to your story, and I would be upset if we did not mention your aunt and pay homage to her.

Who was she?

-My aunt?

-Yes, in Cuba.

-Oh, my goodness.

I'm surprised you brought her up.

-[in Spanish] Really?

-We have an interesting relationship.

-Oh.

-But she's, she's great.

Look, she's, she's a well-known singer in Cuba.

She's the only other musician in the family.

My family, they're all made up of, like, doctors, lawyers.

It's not-- arts was not really a thing.

She's a pretty well-known singer.

Bolero is her, her main style.

But, yeah, it's, yeah, we do have an interesting relationship.

-I'm gonna pick your brain on that.

-All musicians do.

It's normal.

-Yunior Lopez, thank you so much for joining Nevada Week In Person.

-Thank you.