SymphonyNow

What happens when the Bemidji Symphony—a small community orchestra in northern Minnesota—performs Defiant Requiem, a multimedia adaptation of Verdi’s Requiem that incorporates the Holocaust? The chance for a broader dialogue with the local Native American community, for one thing. More

It was nearly standing room only at the June 8 Red Alert! plenary session at the League of American Orchestras’ National Conference, as crowds surged into the Grand Ballroom this morning at the Hilton in Minneapolis. The session presented a candid look at where orchestras are now, and also offered two highly detailed, fresh perspectives on the nuts and bolts of how orchestras might not only survive but thrive. League President and CEO Jesse Rosen started the session with an address that tackled the challenges orchestras are confronting and also celebrated orchestras’ sterling record of achievement. More

As the year nears its grand finale, several critics have reflected on the place of contemporary music and living composers within our field’s ecosystem. Anthony Tommasini and Allan Kozinn, both of The New York Times, looked at recent new-music developments—at the major institutions and in alternate venues, respectively—while Rob Deemer of NewMusicBox offered a slightly different take. “Classical music audiences seem more curious than ever,” Tommasini observed in the Times on December 11, “and performers have been emboldened over the past decade or so to take more chances. More

Recent bankruptcies and strikes have tended to grab most of the headlines, but one orchestra to suffer the slings and arrows of the downturn for months in relative silence was South Carolina’s Charleston Symphony. In early February 2009, More

This summer is Christopher Wilkins’s first as music director of Boston Landmarks Orchestra, which has been performing free outdoor concerts at Boston’s DCR Hatch Memorial Shell since its founding in 2001. Wilkins—who is also music director of Akron Symphony in Ohio and the Orlando Philharmonic in Florida—is only the group’s second music director More

The lingering effects of the economic downturn continue to take a toll on orchestras across the country. Enough, in fact, to forget that one of the first organizations to feel the heat was the Honolulu Symphony, which filed for bankruptcy in December 2010 More

Symphony orchestras, like professional sports teams, are ideally the embodiment of coordinated group effort and a healthy dose of esprit de corps. Like pro sports teams, they also identify strongly with specific localities, both in their names and in their fan base. Orchestras playing for the home team is nothing new, but as the current season gets underway the spirit of collaboration seems especially high, with orchestras in St. Louis, Detroit, Cleveland, Winnipeg, and Tampa linking up with the flagship teams in their respective cities.  More

What’s the best way to find new audiences for classical music? Not through music-education programs, according to a June 27 column by Anne Midgette, classical-music critic of the Washington Post. More

This past Saturday, cellist Matt Haimovitz headed down to Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan, where the Occupy Wall Street protests against social and economic inequality have been underway since September 17. Once arriving there, he found someone to loan him a 5-gallon plastic bucket, pulled out his 300-year-old Venetian cello and beloved Peccatte bow, sat down on the bucket, and starting playing. More

Rehearsing and conducting concerts is the central activity for an orchestra conductor, and one that doesn’t vary much, the world over. But Chelsea Tipton II, music director of the Symphony of Southeast Texas, has been spending his summer in an unusual role: rehearsing but rarely performing with a series of local orchestras during the Symphonicity tour of Europe by rock musician Sting. More

Once upon a time, if you wanted to attend an orchestra concert, your evening might go something like this: look up a box-office phone number on a physical brochure to purchase tickets; ask friends for recommendations for a dinner spot; dub the symphony you’re about to see from your record player More

We’ve all seen it: the new composition that is commissioned with great expectations, premiered with great fanfare, reviewed with great discernment—and then vanishes, seldom to be heard again. But over eighteen months between 2008 and 2010, one work—Joseph Schwantner’s Chasing Light…—was given more than 70 performances. More

Violins were dusted off. Tubas were taken out of the closet. Clarinets were re-assembled. And 53 amateur musicians gave their instruments—and chops—an intense workout at the Minnesota Orchestra Fantasy Camp, where they rehearsed alongside members of the Minnesota Orchestra for two days, September 15 and 16, culminating with a performance of Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances on the orchestra’s season sampler concert. More

Genre crossover is one of the hot trends in concert music today. One of the rising stars in this rapidly expanding category is the young Arab-American composer Mohammed Fairouz (shown with members of the Alabama Symphony Youth Orchestra), who skillfully incorporates Middle Eastern musical elements into More

Just a few weeks ago, The Florida Orchestra surprised the arts world with the announcement that it will conduct a cultural exchange with Cuba over the next several years, with the first visit by its musicians to Havana set for this September. More

It’s the first Tuesday in August, and a small group of tweens is walking the grounds of Tanglewood Music Center with Monisse Reed, program coordinator for a summer camp they are attending a short distance away in Lenox, Mass. The kids are part of a larger group that arrived at the camp yesterday, from cities and towns across Massachusetts, for Week 6 of the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s Days in the Arts (DARTS) program. Today they are making their first visit to Tanglewood as DARTS campers. More

The numbers don’t lie: eight years of assessments by Teachers College at Columbia University say that children who participate in the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra’s Early Strings Program outperform their peers districtwide by 25 to 30 percent on standardized math, literacy, and science tests. More

Experts run your marketing department. A CFO with post-graduate degrees handles your money. And your musicians are at the apogee of artistry. But when it comes to your orchestra’s digital-media initiatives, who does the work? Until recently, it might have been the intern. But things are changing—fast—and what was once relegated to the sidelines or handled ad hoc is now a central means for connecting with audiences, communities, and the larger world. More