This weekend, Justus Rozemond takes up the baton to conduct the Bay of Plenty Symphonia for the last time as music director, after being appointed in 2012.

Justus has seen the orchestra change a lot during his tenure, from an audience-driven enterprise to a player-oriented structure of three to four concerts a year, one of which is dedicated to youth development in some way.

There is of course Rising Stars – featured this coming Sunday, August 27, at 3.30pm, Baycourt Theatre – and in alternate years ‘something else’, like the concert with clown Mr Wizowski, or ‘Peter and the Wolf’, which were extremely popular.

In terms of developmental pathways for young orchestral musicians in Tauranga, Justus is very proud of the Youth Philharmonic Tauranga, which he founded in 2016 with the support of the FAME Trust, as this allows young players to progress from school orchestra to YPT, to BOPS, to tertiary education.

Of the winner of the composition competition, which will be performed at the Rising Stars concert this weekend, Justus says: “It’s been rewarding to see Elodie [Broad] win this year, as she’s the only surviving (not literally!) member of the YPT from the very first orchestral workshop in 2016”.

“Her continued exposure to orchestral playing is very evident in the mature approach she has adopted to the orchestration of ‘Taking to the Skies’.”

The five Rising Stars finalists are Bethlehem College’s Sienna Tang, Enoch Tie and David Jiang, Aquinas College’s Ned Shaw and Tauranga Boys’ College’s Pachakamac Lema.

Tickets: Adults $26.50, Concession $24.50, Students/Children $3 (plus booking fees). Tickets available from Baycourt Theatre and online via Ticketek.