Most 12-year-olds are planning a weekend of video games or hanging out with friends. For Ewan Manalo, a seventh-grader at the Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts, he is preparing to play his cello with the Chattanooga Symphony and Opera.
Ewan and the CSO Youth Orchestra will partner for a side-by-side concert with the Chattanooga Symphony on Sunday afternoon, at the Tivoli Theatre. Ewan will also be a featured performer and play a solo in the performance.
Ewan does enjoy friends and games, especially playing with his Legos, but this weekend his cello takes top priority. He is scheduled to play as a featured guest with the Chattanooga Symphony. He will be backed by the CSO on Dvorak’s Allegro from the Concerto in B Minor for cello and orchestra. He earned the honor of playing with the symphony as a winner in the 2017 CSOYO Concerto Competition.
Ewan is multi-talented as he also won second place in the Down East Talent Search performing with a fiddle when he was nine-years-old. He began playing the cello at the age of four and joined the Eastern Preparatory Youth Orchestra in Greenville, N.C.., at the age of six. He is a member of the Chattanooga Symphony Youth Orchestra and plays in the Chattanooga High Center for Creative Arts String Quintet.