RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:
During the pandemic, members of the New York Philharmonic have been giving these live outdoor performances around the city. They recently played a notable new work.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED SPEAKER: Ladies and gentlemen, the world premiere of "Summer."
NOEL KING, HOST:
That piece was composed by Grace Moore, who's from Brooklyn and who is 12 years old. She's one of the youngest people ever to have composed something for the orchestra, and she wrote it during the early days of the pandemic.
GRACE MOORE: Well, the piece's name is "Summer." It's, like, a minute, 30 seconds or something. And I was kind of thinking about, like, the current events. I wanted to compose, like, a happier piece.
(SOUNDBITE OF NEW YORK PHILHARMONIC PERFORMANCE OF "SUMMER")
G MOORE: I thought it was cool that they gave me this opportunity.
KING: Cool indeed. Grace is part of the Philharmonic's Very Young Composers program. It offers kids a chance to write music for some of the world's top musicians. Gary Padmore is the director of education and community engagement at the Philharmonic.
GARY PADMORE: I think she might have written that piece in about two weeks, if I'm not mistaken. But it really was structured in a way that sort of brought people back to summer and sort of the purity of summer, you know, in the midst of all the craziness happening in the world.
MARTIN: Grace has been making music since she was really little according to her mom, Clara Moore.
CLARA MOORE: And she does it quite naturally. So it's hard for her to imagine or express the difficulty or the chore of it, because it's sort of been the music that she's been receiving or channeling that she's been getting ever since she was a child.
MARTIN: Clara Moore says she's really happy for other people to hear her daughter's music.
C MOORE: The music that she plays and how she plays it really expresses the sweetness of her nature. The piece that she did compose for the Philharmonic, people felt the same thing.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
: Grace Moore, everyone. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.