The PYP has had five conductors and music directors during its history: Gershkovitch (1924–1953), Avshalomov (1954–1995), Huw Edwards (1995–2002), Mei-Ann Chen (2002–2007), and professional clarinetist David Hattner (2008–present).

Participating musicians range in age from seven to twenty-two years and attend dozens of schools within the Portland metropolitan area and surrounding communities.

After moving to Portland, Oregon, where her aunt owned a boarding house, she met and married civil engineer and double bass player Mott Dodge.

[4][6] With assistance from parents and a professional flautist from Italy, who taught the children how to play wind instruments and conducted, Dodge assembled a small orchestra.

[4][6] According to former violin student Ruth Saunders, "All of the sighing, tooting and drumming soon made the citizens aware that something was going on, and due to her powers of persuasion, they found themselves devoting their time, talents, money and children to the creation of the Sagebrush Orchestra.

[6] With funds provided by rancher Bill Hanley, lawyer and artist Charles Erskine Scott Wood, and additional Burns businessmen, Dodge purchased musical instruments for the children and expanded the orchestra to between thirty and thirty-five members.

[6][8] During the symphony's week-long tour, one Oregonian reporter wrote: "The journey of the little people is considered one of the finest exhibitions of community spirit ever shown in this state.

However, due to gender inequality in the United States at the time, Dodge knew that a professional male conductor would need to lead the orchestra.

One orchestra member recalled: "I well remember the excitement of that night when Gershkovitch climbed the stairs to Mary Dodge's attic, where we had assembled to play for him.

[6][11][12] The original board of directors established the mission of the orchestra: "to encourage appreciation and rendition of orchestral music by young people, to give public symphonic and popular concerts, to discover and develop latent talent among the children of Portland".

[6] Born in 1884 to a Jewish family in Irkutsk, Russia,[15][16] Gershkovitch grew up listening to chamber music and was sent to Saint Petersburg in his late teens to study at the Imperial Conservatory.

[15][17] In 1913, he graduated with honors in flute and conducting, and was awarded the Schubert Scholarship for a year of study under German conductor Arthur Nikisch in Berlin.

[15] Gershkovitch began his conducting career as head of the Imperial Russian Army's military symphony orchestra, a position he held through the 1917 revolution.

[20] Gershkovitch taught flute and conducted the Ellison-White Conservatory's student orchestra, at the time directed by Jacob Avshalomov, until his new PJS duties required his full attention.

[26] According to Ronald Russell, author of A New West to Explore (1938), the audience "had experienced a new emotional thrill, and forthwith became strong advocates and supporters of the junior symphony cause.

[27] The Sunday Oregonian reported that convention attendees were "so deeply impressed that they declared it unhesitatingly the most wonderful organization of its kind in the entire country".

The organization was sustained financially through concert admission and donations—instruments, funds towards scholarships and the general endowment, and music for the association's library were also accepted to ensure the symphony's continued viability.

[18] "To command attention, maintain discipline, and secure the maximum results he resorted to sarcasm, praise, ridicule, humor, flattery, scolding, dirty looks and the highest commendation—all in a quaint and very special brand of English.

Apart from music education, Gershkovitch stressed the importance of proper conduct, manners, and "values in life and art" as ways to build character.

[32] His father was Aaron Avshalomov, the Siberian-born composer known for "oriental musical materials cast in western forms and media", and mother was from San Francisco.

[33] Jacob graduated from British and American schools before age fifteen, then worked as a factory supervisor in Tientsin, Shanghai and Beijing over a span of four years.

He then enlisted with a British volunteer corps after Japan's invasion of China during the Second Sino-Japanese War, and eventually returned to the United States with his mother in December 1937.

The day following the concert, Chen played for conductor Benjamin Zander in a closed basement hotel bar and was offered a scholarship immediately.

Chen became PYP's fourth conductor in 2002 after being selected by a committee of "musically inclined" parents, a member of the orchestra, and representatives from the Oregon Symphony and Portland Opera.

[40] During her five-year tenure with the organization, PYP debuted at Carnegie Hall,[53] received its third ASCAP award in 2004 for innovating programming,[51] and began collaborating with the Oregon Symphony (Chen was the ensemble's assistant conductor from 2003 to 2005) and Chamber Music Northwest.

[52][54][55] She also won the Taki Concordia Fellowship in 2007, an award established by Baltimore Symphony Orchestra music director Marin Alsop to support "promising" female conductors.

[40] One board member of the organization praised Chen's attitude and felt that her lack of ego was a "rare quality in top symphony performers".

[23][52] The Philharmonic offered a total of six performances between June 29 and July 17 in Kaohsiung, Tainan and Taipei, Taiwan, as well as in Seoul and Ulsan, South Korea.

[64] Having previously conducted ballet repertory, Gershkovitch was approached in 1934 by Willam Christensen of the Portland Creative Theatre and School of Music, Drama, and Dance to collaborate.

[68] The concert consisted of three pieces performed by PYP and conducted by Avshalomov ("Dance of the Clowns" from Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's opera The Maid of Orleans, the first movement of Schubert's Unfinished Symphony and the fourth movement of Avshalomov's own symphony, The Oregon), a performance by the New York Philharmonic under Leonard Bernstein's leadership and finally Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet conducted by Bernstein with a combined ensemble of 210 musicians.