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The Gateway Festival Orchestra is a seasonal orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. It usually performs four concerts each summer on Sunday evenings on the campus of Washington University.
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The Gateway Festival Orchestra is a seasonal orchestra based in St. Louis, Missouri. It usually performs four concerts each summer on Sunday evenings on the campus of Washington University.
The Gateway Festival Orchestra was founded in 1964 by Professor William Schatzkamer of Washington University along with members of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra and community leaders. The orchestra performed its first concerts on the levee of the Mississippi River. It began performing on the Brookings Quadrangle at Washington University in 1970. Due to construction on the Quadrangle, it is performing in Washington University's 560 Music Center for the 2019 season. Due to the pandemic, there were no concerts in 2020. In 2021, there were 3 concerts at St. Louis Music Park at Centene Community Ice Center and one at Chesterfield Amphitheater. The orchestra's board of directors is currently planning concerts for the summer of 2022 in a variety of locations.
The GFO is an ensemble of paid instrumentalists. Its concerts are free to the public.
The orchestra's first music director William Schatzkamer, who was trained at the Juilliard School of Music. He was a piano student of Alexander Siloti. Over his storied career performing, he performed a total of 175 concerts and recitals and recorded with RCA Victor. He served on the music faculty of Washington University between 1951 and 1987.
The orchestra's second music director was Dr. James Richards, Professor of Orchestral Studies at the University of Missouri–St. Louis. He was trained at the Eastman School of Music. Richards retired at the end of the 2018 season.
The orchestra's current music director is Darwin Aquino, a native of the Dominican Republic. He has a master's degree in Music for orchestral conducting from Florida International University, and has conducted numerous orchestras in Europe and the Americas.
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor, author and composer.
Robert Lawson Shaw was an American conductor most famous for his work with his namesake Chorale, with the Cleveland Orchestra and Chorus, and the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and Chorus. He was known for drawing public attention to choral music through his wide-ranging influence and mentoring of younger conductors, the high standard of his recordings, his support for racial integration in his choruses, and his support for modern music, winning many awards throughout his career.
James Litton is an American musician, who directed the American Boychoir from 1985 to 2001, and is widely recognized as one of the leading choral conductors of the day.
David Eric Robertson is an American conductor. He was chief conductor of the Sydney Symphony Orchestra, and was formerly music director of the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra from 2005 until 2018. He is Director of Orchestral Studies at Juilliard.
Rudolph Ganz was a Swiss-born American pianist, conductor, composer, and music educator.
The culture of St. Louis, Missouri includes a variety of attractions located within the city of St. Louis, Missouri, and in surrounding communities in Greater St. Louis, such as local museums, attractions, music, performing arts venues, and places of worship.
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Leon Burke III is an American musician, singer, and conductor from St. Louis, Missouri. He began his musical studies at age 12 and by age 16 was conducting orchestras.
William Schatzkamer was an American educator, pianist, and conductor.
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Robert A. Wykes was an American composer of contemporary classical music and flautist.
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The Missouri Chamber Music Festival and Adult Chamber Music Intensive (ACMI) was founded in 2010. The goal of the MOCM Festival concerts is to present the fine art of small ensemble music to a wide audience through an accessible, community-based festival. The ACMI workshop is the educational portion of the festival, placing adult instrumentalists in chamber ensembles with Festival artists for coaching and performance.
Robert Hart Baker is a symphonic and operatic conductor and music director based in York, Pennsylvania, United States. He has toured extensively in the U.S., Canada, and abroad. Among the many concerts he has led have been the full works of the Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky symphonies and the Strauss tone poems, in addition to most of the orchestral works of Mahler, Dvorak, Schubert, Debussy, Ravel, Poulenc, and Ernest Bloch.
The Tulsa Youth Symphony Orchestra (TYS) is an Oklahoma nonprofit arts organization founded in 1963 with a stated mission to provide advanced orchestral training and performance experience for talented young musicians in Northeastern Oklahoma. As of 2016, more than 200 students, ages 8 to 18, participate in the program’s two orchestras. The orchestra is composed of students from northeast Oklahoma communities and schools including Tulsa, Bartlesville, Owasso, Sapulpa, Sand Springs, Broken Arrow, Bixby, Coweta, Grove, Oologah, Jenks, and Holland Hall, as well as home schooled children. The orchestra celebrated its 50th year in the 2013 season.
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Timothy McAllister is an American classical saxophonist and music educator, who, as of 2014, is Professor of Saxophone at the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre & Dance.
The School of Music is an academic division of the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Its focus is the study of music, awarding baccalaureate, master's, and doctoral degrees as part of the College of Arts and Science. The institution's programs encompass composition, performance, conducting, music education, music history, musical theatre and musicology. Established in 1917 as the Department of Music, the school continues to play a prominent role in the cultural life of Missouri and is located in the Sinquefield Music Center, on the University's flagship campus in Downtown Columbia. The Fine Arts Building also houses classrooms, studios, and a recital hall. Its major performance venues are Jesse Hall, the Missouri Theatre, and Whitmore Recital Hall. The Missouri Tigers marching band, Marching Mizzou, performs at Faurot Field for Southeastern Conference football games. The school's ensembles have performed worldwide and can be heard weekly on the University's own KMUC 90.5 FM Classical, Mid-Missouri's classical music radio station. Alumni include singers Sheryl Crow and Neal Boyd, Canadian Brass founder Gene Watts, and jazz artist Mike Metheny.