Time Signatures - Symphony

In Brief | The League of American Orchestras salutes member organizations that are celebrating noteworthy anniversaries during the 2024-25 season. Here’s a look at just some of the synchronicities and juxtapositions of orchestral music across the country—and across time.

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Remember Y2K? The turn of the previous century provoked no such hysteria, but the year 1900 did produce some seismic cultural events. Puccini’s Tosca had its premiere in Rome, the first Michelin Guide was published in France, and Sir Arthur Sullivan died in London. Across the Atlantic, The Wizard of Oz was published in Chicago, Aaron Copland was born in Brooklyn, and a small group of musicians with the German conductor Fritz Scheel founded the Philadelphia Orchestra, one of the first major American musical institutions to be born in the brand-new century. Barely a quarter of a century later, in 1924, Mary Curtis Bok launched the Curtis Institute of Music in downtown Philadelphia, aimed at training professional musicians; the orchestra and the school would become inextricably linked, with Curtis supplying musicians to the orchestra who would in turn become faculty.

This copious list of anniversaries of American musical institutions tracks the growth and development of orchestral music across the country and the centuries. Launching a symphony orchestra went hand in hand with civic growth. In the 1930s, the trend proceeded westward through Michigan, with the Lansing and Grand Rapids symphonies founded during the 1929-30 season, as well as the West Michigan Symphony in Muskegon and, right across Lake Michigan, the Kenosha Symphony (Wisconsin) established at the decade’s end. Meanwhile, in 1934-35, prominent citizens in Buffalo, NY and Montreal recruited New York City-based conductors to helm their new endeavors: respectively Lajos Shuk, a cellist and director of the New York Civic Symphony, and the Canadian-born Wilfrid Pelletier, then a busy staff conductor at the Metropolitan Opera. Pelletier would also be an important figure in the establishment of Montreal’s music conservatory.

Music education was sometimes the spur for orchestra creation. The Atlanta Symphony was launched as the Atlanta Youth Symphony in 1945, its ranks filled with high school and college-age musicians. Professionals were soon added “to inspire the young musicians;” in 1947, the orchestra adopted its current name. Rhode Island’s orchestra, also celebrating its 80th season, merged with a community music school in 2000 to become the Rhode Island Philharmonic & Music School, becoming one of the few fully integrated professional orchestras and music schools in the United States.

The 1964-65 season saw the creation of six youth orchestras, ranging across the country from Virginia to Washington to Hawai‘i. The Florida Youth Symphony ran up against the toxic racial politics of the period: when the venue hosting the youth orchestra’s first rehearsals objected to Black and Latino children in the program, the orchestra moved to the North Miami Beach City Hall, where it was sponsored by the mayor.

Launching a symphony orchestra went hand in hand with civic growth.

A watershed moment in the birth of non-traditional orchestras was the 1974 founding of New York’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL), now celebrating its 50th anniversary season. This assemblage of counter-culture-y virtuoso chamber musicians, organized by Michael Feldman, played concerts at the Church of St. Luke in the Fields in Greenwich Village—the first included a small opera, a Telemann suite, and an organ concerto—and hired itself out to other groups, including dance companies. In 1979, it was officially expanded into a full orchestra for the Caramoor International Music Festival and quickly became the go-to for-hire orchestra for special projects at Carnegie Hall and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, working with guest conductors. Later, the orchestra appointed its own music directors and principal conductors and presented concert seasons while maintaining its independent attitude.

ROCO (originally the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, based in Houston, Texas), founded 30 years later by oboist Alecia Lawyer, is in some ways an heir of OSL, its format reflective of a new age. A flexible, musician-led organization, it ranges from one to 40 players, specializes in commissioning new music, has artistic partners rather than music directors, sells many of its tickets on a pay-what-you-wish basis, and began live-streaming its concerts for free in 2013.

This season marks Carl St.Clair’s 35th—and likely final—year as music director of the Pacific Symphony. St.Clair is the longest-tenured American-born conductor of a major American orchestra. He has presided over considerable growth: The Pacific Symphony became the largest-budget orchestra formed in the last 50 years and moved into its new custom-built Cesar Pelli-designed concert hall in Costa Mesa, California.

Orchestras are still being formed: consider the ten-year-old Kirkland Civic Orchestra in Washington, a community ensemble formerly called the Microsoft Orchestra (its music director is a software engineer). And on the other side of the country, the venerable Handel and Haydn Society is celebrating not only 30 years of youth choruses, but the fact that it has performed Handel’s Messiah for 170 consecutive seasons.

This anniversaries list offers a fascinating juxtaposition of the old and the new and demonstrates how the urge to make music lives on.

Note:
The list was developed based on submissions by members of the League of American Orchestras and information from the League’s database. If your League-member organization is missing from the list, please email member@americanorchestras.org with “Anniversary” in the subject line.

130 Years

125 Years

105 Years

100 Years

95 Years

90 Years

85 Years

80 Years

75 Years

70 Years

65 Years

60 Years

50 Years

45 Years

40 Years

35 Years

30 Years

25 Years

20 Years

15 Years

10 Years