Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra {MISSION & HISTORY | CONTACT | CAREERS | ADMINISTRATION}

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is a dynamic ensemble of some of the world’s finest musicians. The fifth oldest symphony orchestra in the United States and the oldest orchestra in Ohio, the CSO has played a leading role in the cultural life of Greater Cincinnati and the Midwest since its founding in 1895.

The CSO entered a new era in September 2001, when the dynamic young conductor Paavo Järvi succeeded Jesús López-Cobos (now Music Director Emeritus) and stepped to the podium as the orchestra’s 12th Music Director. In his ninth season as Music Director in 2009-2010, Maestro Järvi conducts 11 subscription weeks in Cincinnati. He is expanding the 115-year-old orchestra’s repertoire with works never before performed by the CSO, as well as undertaking a concert tour of Japan and Carnegie Hall.

Over the years, the CSO has built a reputation as one of the world’s foremost orchestras and a champion of the new music of its day. The CSO has been home to the American premieres of works by such composers as Debussy, Ravel and Bartók, and has commissioned works that have since become mainstays of the classical repertoire, including Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man. The CSO was the first orchestra to be broadcast to a national radio audience (1921) and the third orchestra to record (1917). Today, the orchestra continues to commission new works and to program an impressive array of music.

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra is known around the world for its recordings with Telarc, the Cleveland-based Grammy Award-winning label. Through both the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Cincinnati Pops Orchestra, the orchestra has sold nearly 10 million units on the Telarc label.

Ohio Governor Bob Taft presented the Governor’s Excellence in Exporting Award to the CSO in July 2002, recognizing the global reach of the orchestra, especially through its international recording sales and international touring.

The CSO was the first American orchestra to make a world tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, and continues to tour domestically and internationally, recently completing an 11-concert, five-country tour to Europe in the fall of 2004 and an eight-concert tour of Japan in the fall of 2003. The Orchestra returns to Japan in 2009 and can be followed online at cincinnatisymphony.org/japan. The CSO made its Carnegie Hall debut in 1917 with then music director Ernst Kunwald. Since that time, the CSO has performed more than 44 times at Carnegie Hall, and will be returning in February 2010.

One of 18 North American orchestras performing year-round, including classical and Pops subscription concerts, Young People’s Concerts and Lollipop Family Concerts at Music Hall, Riverbend concerts in June and July, and Concerts in the Park, the CSO also is the official orchestra for the May Festival and Cincinnati Opera. The CSO Chamber Players series, instituted by the orchestra in 1988, provides an intimate chamber music alternative.

Telarc’s 32 recordings of the CSO over nearly two decades have met with critical and listener acclaim. In 2003 the CSO’s Music of Turina and Debussy was nominated for a “Best Orchestral Performance” Grammy. Three other albums by the CSO and Cincinnati Pops were named under the “Producer of the Year, Classical” category. The Pops’ Copland: Music of America won a Grammy in 1997, and four other Pops recordings were nominated for Grammy Awards between 1987 and 1993. The Pops’ 1988 American Jubilee was awarded France’s Grand Prix du Disque.

The CSO is committed to enhancing and expanding music education for the children of Greater Cincinnati and works to bring music education, in its many different forms, to as broad a public as possible. Since 1999, the CSO has been reaching this goal through its innovative education and outreach program Sound Discoveries: Music for Life, Music for the Community, Music for a Career.

Cincinnati Pops Orchestra

The CSO founded the Cincinnati Pops Orchestra in 1977 with Erich Kunzel, Founder and Conductor Emeritus.

Today the Cincinnati Pops, composed of musicians of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, is one of the world's most active classical pops ensembles, performing 20 or more subscription concerts during the Music Hall season and 10 subscription concerts at Riverbend Music Center, the orchestra's outdoor summer home, where the inaugural concert was given by Maestro Kunzel and the Cincinnati Pops on July 4, 1984.

The Cincinnati Pops has gained new fans the world over through tour performances (Japan and Taiwan in 1990 and again in 1997, plus domestic performances that include concerts every other year at New York's Carnegie Hall), recordings on the Telarc label, and television specials for PBS.

"Popular" concerts have been very much a part of the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra tradition since the ensemble was founded in 1895. When a young Leopold Stokowski became the CSO's second music director in 1909, he gave renewed emphasis to Pops concerts — an aspect of Stokowski's career that perhaps reached its zenith years later when, at the end of the animated film Fantasia, he became the only conductor ever to shake Mickey Mouse's hand! Pops performances were also presented by subsequent CSO music directors, and the CSO Pops series was also headed during the 1940s by CSO member Reuben Lawson and the celebrated conductor and arranger Andre Kostelanetz. It was Kostelanetz who commissioned Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, and Kern's A Mark Twain Portrait and gave both pieces their world premiere performances at a special Cincinnati Symphony concert at Music Hall in 1942.

Contact

• CSO Administrative Offices
1241 Elm Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
513.621.1919 | M-F 9am-5pm
513.744.3535 fax

• Music Hall Box Office
1241 Elm Street
Cincinnati, OH 45202
513.381.3300 | M-Sat. 10am-5pm
(Sat. 10am-2pm during summer)
513.744.3599 fax

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For a history of Music Hall 1878 to present, visit the website of the Society for the Preservation of Music Hall.