| Nashville Symphony | |
|---|---|
| Orchestra | |
 official logo | |
| Founded | 1946 |
| Concert hall | Schermerhorn Symphony Center |
| Principal conductor | Giancarlo Guerrero |
| Website | www |
The Nashville Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in Nashville, Tennessee. The orchestra is resident at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center.
In 1920, prior to the 1946 founding of the Nashville Symphony, a group of amateur and professional musicians established an orchestral ensemble in Nashville, electing Nashville Banner music critic and Vanderbilt University professor George Pullen Jackson to serve as their president and manager. Despite steady growth over the next decade, that organization fell victim to The Depression. In 1945, World War II veteran and Nashville native Walter Sharp returned home from the war intent on establishing a new symphony for Middle Tennessee. [1] With the assistance of a small number of fellow music lovers, he convinced community leaders of this need and the Nashville Symphony was founded.
Sharp retained William Strickland, a young conductor from New York, to serve as its first music director and conductor. The orchestra performed its first concert in the fall of 1946 at War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Nashville. Over the ensuing five seasons, Strickland was responsible for setting the high performance standards that the orchestra and its conductors have maintained to this day. Guy Taylor (1951–1959), Willis Page (1959–1967), Thor Johnson (1967–1975) and Michael Charry (1976–1982) were successive music directors. During Charry's tenure, the symphony moved its subscription series from War Memorial Auditorium to Jackson Hall in the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.
Beginning in 1983, Music Director and Principal Conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn led the Nashville Symphony for 22 years, until his death in April 2005. The orchestra's profile increased during his tenure through recordings, television broadcasts and an East Coast tour, which culminated in a performance at Carnegie Hall on September 25, 2000. [2] Following Schermerhorn's death, in April 2006, Leonard Slatkin was named the orchestra's artistic advisor, for a contract of three years, through 2009. [3]
In September 2006, the Symphony opened Schermerhorn Symphony Center, a $123.5 million project, which includes Laura Turner Concert Hall. [4] Slatkin conducted the orchestra's first concert in the new hall on September 9, 2006, which included works by Shostakovich, Barber and Mahler, and a world premiere Triple Concerto by Bela Fleck, Zakir Hussain and Edgar Meyer.
In September 2007, the orchestra announced the appointment of Costa Rican conductor Giancarlo Guerrero as the seventh music director of the Nashville Symphony, effective with the 2009–2010 season, with an initial contract for 5 years. [5] Under his direction, the orchestra has received a number of awards, including the 2011 ASCAP award for Programming of Contemporary Music, [6] the 2013 ASCAP award for Programming of Contemporary Music [7] and National Endowment for the Arts grants supporting its commitment to American music. [8] The orchestra's recordings have also earned a number of Grammy Awards and nominations (see Recordings below).
In March 2019, the orchestra announced the appointment of Enrico Lopez-Yañez as Principal Pops Conductor of the Nashville Symphony [9] after serving as the assistant conductor since 2017. [10]
In June 2020, in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, the orchestra announced the suspension of its concert activities through July 31, 2021, and the furlough of 79 musicians, 49 staff members, and Guerrero on July 1, 2020. [11]
In June 2023, Guerrero announced his intention to conclude his tenure as music director of the Nashville Symphony at the close of the 2024-2025 season, and subsequently to take the title of music director laureate for the 2025-2026 season. [12]
For the Naxos label, the orchestra has made more than 30 recordings since the year 2000. Several of these CDs have garnered a total of 26 Grammy Award nominations and 14 Grammy Awards. In 2008, the orchestra's CD of the music of Joan Tower, Made in America, won 3 Grammy Awards, including Best Orchestral Performance and Best Classical Album. In 2011, the orchestra's CD of music by Michael Daugherty, "Deus Ex Machina," won 3 Grammy Awards, and the following year its recording of music by Christopher Rouse, "Concerto for Percussion and Orchestra," earned one Grammy Award. The orchestra's 2016 recording of works by Jennifer Higdon earned two Grammy Awards and most recently their recording of "Christopher Rouse - Symphony No.5" won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition. [13]
Music education has been an integral part of the Nashville Symphony's mission for much of its existence. Early in the orchestra's history, ensembles of musicians visited local schools. The orchestra has also offered free concerts for Nashville-area students since at least the 1970s. Most recently, the orchestra launched the Accelerando program, which is designed to create opportunities for young musicians from ethnic communities underrepresented in American orchestras. The program has received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Leonard Edward Slatkin is an American conductor, author and composer.
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by The New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world. After gaining recognition for her first orchestral composition, Sequoia (1981), a tone poem which structurally depicts a giant tree from trunk to needles, she has gone on to compose a variety of instrumental works including Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, which is something of a response to Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, the Island Prelude, five string quartets, and an assortment of other tone poems. Tower was pianist and founding member of the Naumburg Award-winning Da Capo Chamber Players, which commissioned and premiered many of her early works, including her widely performed Petroushskates.
The Baltimore Symphony Orchestra (BSO) is an American symphony orchestra based in Baltimore, Maryland. The Baltimore SO has its principal residence at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, where it performs more than 130 concerts a year. In 2005, it began regular performances at the Music Center at Strathmore in Bethesda.
Kenneth Daniel Fuchs is a Grammy Award-winning American composer. He currently serves as Professor of Music Composition at the University of Connecticut in Storrs, Connecticut.
Hans Graf is an Austrian conductor.
The Albany Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra based in Albany, New York.
James Zuill Bailey, better known as Zuill Bailey is an American Grammy Award-winning cello soloist, chamber musician, and artistic director. A graduate of the Peabody Institute of the Johns Hopkins University and the Juilliard School, he has appeared in recital and with major orchestras internationally. He is a professor of cello and Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Texas at El Paso. Bailey’s extensive recording catalogue are released on TELARC, Avie, Steinway and Sons, Octave, Delos, Albany, Sono Luminus, Naxos, Azica, Concord, EuroArts, ASV, Oxingale and Zenph Studios.
Paul Jacobs is an American organist. He is the first organist to receive a Grammy Award. Jacobs is currently the chair of the Juilliard School's organ department and is considered "America’s premier organ performer…."
JoAnn Falletta is an American conductor.
Yannick Nézet-Séguin, CC is a Canadian conductor and pianist. He is currently music director of the Orchestre Métropolitain (Montréal), the Metropolitan Opera, and the Philadelphia Orchestra. He was the principal conductor of the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra from 2008 to 2018.
Peng-Peng Gong, formerly known as his stage name Peng Peng, is a Chinese classical composer and pianist born on July 3, 1992. Described by The Washington Post as an artist "with the confidence of a weathered veteran and a welcome unbridled quality to his playing", he has established himself as one of the most gifted young artists of his generation. At 18, he has become an internationally active concert pianist and a six-time American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers National Award-winning composer in consecutive years since 2006. He was among the youngest pianists to be officially signed to the artist roster of the renowned Opus 3 Artists in 2007 at age 14, and the youngest composer to be signed by the [Lauren Keiser Music Publishing] in 2009 at age 16. Since 2005, he concertized and toured intensely in the North America, South America, Europe, and China, appearing in over a hundred solo and orchestral engagements. He was invited twice, on personal request, by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to perform for the United States Congress.
David Alan Miller is a multi-Grammy Award-winning American symphony orchestra conductor, and since 1992, music director of the Albany Symphony Orchestra. Miller served as assistant and associate conductor of the Los Angeles Philharmonic from 1987–92 and music director of the New York Youth Symphony from 1982-88. He is currently also Artistic Advisor to both the Sarasota Orchestra and to The Little Orchestra Society in New York City.
The Holiday Overture is a composition for orchestra by Elliott Carter. Carter wrote the work during the summer of 1944, on commission from the Boston Symphony Orchestra, to celebrate the liberation of Paris during World War II. In addition, Carter composed the overture for the Independent Concert Music Publisher's Contest 1945, and won this competition. The overture was to have been premiered in Boston. However, Carter made a copy of some parts of the work. Eventually, the work received its premiere in Frankfurt in 1946, conducted by Hans Blümer. In 1961, Carter revised the overture.
Metropolis Symphony for Orchestra (1988–93) by American composer Michael Daugherty is a five-movement symphony inspired by Superman comics. The entire piece was created over the span of five years with separate commissions for each movement. Individual movements may be performed separately; however, it is preferred that the 41 minute symphony be performed in its entirety. MetropolisSymphony was premiered by the New Hampshire Symphony Orchestra, James Bolle conducting, in November 1993, at the Palace Theater in Manchester, New Hampshire. A connective narrative between movements was written and read by Jack Larson, who had played Jimmy Olsen on television in The Adventures of Superman. The orchestral version without narration was premiered by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, David Zinman conducting, in January 1994, at the Meyerhoff Concert Hall in Baltimore, Maryland.
Deus ex Machina is a piano concerto by the American composer Michael Daugherty. The 33-minute work was jointly commissioned by the Charlotte, Nashville, New Jersey, Rochester and Syracuse Symphony Orchestras. It won the 2011 Grammy for Best Classical Contemporary Composition for a recording by soloist Terrance Wilson and the Nashville Symphony Orchestra under the baton of Giancarlo Guerrero.
Giancarlo Guerrero is a Costa Rican orchestra conductor, born in Nicaragua. He is the music director of the Nashville Symphony in Nashville, Tennessee. Guerrero is also Music Director of the Wrocław Philharmonic at the National Forum of Music in Wrocław, Poland and has served as principal guest conductor of the Gulbenkian Orchestra in Lisbon, Portugal. He was formerly the associate conductor of the Minnesota Orchestra and the music director of the Eugene Symphony. He has won six Grammy Awards.
Kenneth Kiesler is an American symphony orchestra and opera conductor and mentor to conductors. Kiesler is conductor laureate of the Illinois Symphony Orchestra where he was music director from 1980 to 2000 and founder and director of the Conductors Retreat at Medomak. In 2014, Kiesler was nominated for a Grammy Award for his recording of Darius Milhaud’s opera L’Orestie d’Eschyle. He is Director of Orchestras and Professor of Conducting at the University of Michigan.
Tales of Hemingway is a concerto for cello and orchestra composed in 2015 by the American composer Michael Daugherty. The music is inspired by the writings of the famous American writer Ernest Hemingway.
Once Upon a Castle is a symphonie concertante for organ and orchestra composed in 2003 and revised in 2015 by American composer Michael Daugherty. The music is inspired by both the life and times of American media mogul William Randolph Hearst, Hearst Castle, and the Hollywood lore of Charles Foster Kane, a fictional character based on Hearst in the movie Citizen Kane.
Jonathan Leshnoff is an American classical music composer and pedagogue.
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