The Brown University Orchestra was founded in 1918 and is composed of around 100 members of the Brown University

Brown University

Brown University is a private, Ivy League university located in Providence, Rhode Island, United States. Founded in 1764 prior to American independence from the British Empire as the College in the English Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations early in the reign of King George III ,...

 community. It has been led by its current conductor Paul Phillips

Paul Phillips (conductor)

Paul Schuyler Phillips is an American conductor, composer and music scholar. He is Director of Orchestras and Chamber Music, with the rank of Senior Lecturer in Music, at Brown University. He is also Music Director and Conductor of the Pioneer Valley Symphony and Chorus, and maintains an...

 since 1989. Its alumni include members of the Chicago Symphony and other acclaimed orchestras.

Performances

The Brown University Orchestra has performed twice in Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall

Carnegie Hall is a concert venue in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, United States, located at 881 Seventh Avenue, occupying the east stretch of Seventh Avenue between West 56th Street and West 57th Street, two blocks south of Central Park....

, the latter concert featuring the Dave Brubeck Quartet; twice with Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman

Itzhak Perlman is an Israeli-born violinist, conductor, and instructor of master classes. He is regarded as one of the pre-eminent violinists of the 20th and early-21st centuries.-Early life:...

; once in a Providence

Providence, Rhode Island

Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...

 concert that featured his daughter Navah Perlman '92 as piano soloist; and once in a benefit concert at Avery Fisher Hall

Avery Fisher Hall

Avery Fisher Hall is a concert hall, in New York City and is part of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts complex. It is the home of the New York Philharmonic, with a capacity of 2,738 seats.-History:...

. Recent special events include a 2002 tour to Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

, a 2004 performance of Peter Boyer's multimedia composition Ellis Island

Ellis Island

Ellis Island in New York Harbor was the gateway for millions of immigrants to the United States. It was the nation's busiest immigrant inspection station from 1892 until 1954. The island was greatly expanded with landfill between 1892 and 1934. Before that, the much smaller original island was the...

: The Dream of America at Veterans Memorial Auditorium in Providence featuring actors Barry Bostwick

Barry Bostwick

Barry Knapp Bostwick is an American actor and singer. He is known for playing Brad Majors in the 1975 cult classic The Rocky Horror Picture Show, replacing Peter Scolari as Mr. Tyler in the sitcom What I Like About You, and playing mayor Randall Winston in the sitcom Spin City...

 and Brown alumna Kate Burton

Kate Burton (actress)

-Personal life:Burton was born in Geneva, Switzerland, the daughter of producer Sybil Burton and actor Richard Burton . She was thus the stepdaughter of actress Elizabeth Taylor and of Sybil's second husband Jordan Christopher. In 1979, Burton earned a bachelor's degree in Russian studies and...

, and a 2006-7 tour of China

China

Chinese civilization may refer to:* China for more general discussion of the country.* Chinese culture* Greater China, the transnational community of ethnic Chinese.* History of China* Sinosphere, the area historically affected by Chinese culture...

, which made the BUO only the second American college orchestra to tour China.

Musicians

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Rostropovich

Mstislav Leopoldovich Rostropovich, KBE , known to close friends as Slava, was a Soviet and Russian cellist and conductor. He was married to the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. He is widely considered to have been the greatest cellist of the second half of the 20th century, and one of the greatest of...

, Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern

Isaac Stern was a Ukrainian-born violinist. He was renowned for his recordings and for discovering new musical talent.-Biography:Isaac Stern was born into a Jewish family in Kremenets, Ukraine. He was fourteen months old when his family moved to San Francisco...

, Pinchas Zukerman

Pinchas Zukerman

Pinchas Zukerman is a world-renowned violinist, violist, and conductor. He is considered one of the greatest violinists of the 20th and 21st centuries, and his ongoing 45-year career has seen him perform with the world's best-known orchestras and record over 100 works...

, Eugenia Zukerman

Eugenia Zukerman

Eugenia Rich Zukerman is an American flutist, writer, and journalist. An internationally renowned flute virtuoso, Mrs Zukerman has been performing with major orchestras and at major music festivals internationally for more than three decades...

 and Joseph Kalichstein

Joseph Kalichstein

Joseph Kalichstein is a renowned Israeli-born American classical pianist who performs in the concerto, solo recital and chamber music repertoire, the latter mainly with Jaime Laredo and Sharon Robinson in the Kalichstein-Laredo-Robinson Trio...

 are among the renowned musicians who have appeared as soloists with the Brown University Orchestra. Composers-in-residence hosted by the orchestra include Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

, Steven Stucky

Steven Stucky

Steven Stucky is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer.Stucky was born in Hutchinson, Kansas. At age 9, he moved with his family to Abilene, Texas, where, as a teenager, he studied music in the public schools and, privately, viola with Herbert Preston, conducting with Leo Scheer, and...

, Michael Torke

Michael Torke

Michael Torke is an American composer who writes music influenced by jazz and minimalism. Sometimes described as a post-minimalist, his most postminimal piece is Four Proverbs, in which the syllable for each pitch is fixed and variations in the melody produce streams of nonsense words. Other works...

, Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss

Lukas Foss was a German-born American composer, conductor, and pianist.-Music career:He was born Lukas Fuchs in Berlin, Germany in 1922. His father was the philosopher and scholar Martin Fuchs...

 and Samuel Adler

Samuel Adler (composer)

Samuel Hans Adler is an American composer and conductor.-Biography:Adler was born to a Jewish family in Mannheim, Germany, the son of Hugo Chaim Adler, a cantor and composer, and Selma Adler. The family fled to the United States in 1939, where Hugo became the cantor of Temple Emanuel in...

.

Conductors

Previous conductors of the orchestra have included Eiji Oue

Eiji Oue

is a Japanese conductor.Oue began his conducting studies with Hideo Saito of the Toho Gakuen School of Music. In 1978, Seiji Ozawa invited him to spend the summer studying at the Tanglewood Music Center. While there, he met Leonard Bernstein, who became a mentor. Oue won the Tanglewood...

 and Richard Westerfield

Richard Westerfield

Richard Westerfield is an American conductor. He has served as Associate Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and has led orchestras such as the Brown University Orchestra, the Harrisburg Symphony, and the Alabama Symphony Orchestra....

. In December 2006, Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim

Daniel Barenboim, KBE is an Argentinian-Israeli pianist and conductor. He has served as music director of several major symphonic and operatic orchestras and made numerous recordings....

 was a guest conductor when he visited with the West-Eastern Divan

West-Eastern Divan

The West-Eastern Divan is a youth orchestra based in Sevilla, Spain, consisting of musicians from countries in the Middle East, of Egyptian, Iranian, Israeli, Jordanian, Lebanese, Palestinian, Syrian and Spanish background...

 orchestra.

Awards

In 2009, the Brown University Orchestra received the 3rd Prize ASCAP

American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers

The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers is an American not-for-profit performance-rights organization that protects its members' musical copyrights by monitoring public performances of their music, whether via a broadcast or live performance, and compensating them...

 Award for "Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music

Contemporary classical music

Contemporary classical music can be understood as belonging to the period that started in the mid-1970s with the retreat of modernism. However, the term may also be employed in a broader sense to refer to all post-1945 modern musical forms.-Categorization:...

" in the Collegiate Orchestra Division. This is the seventh time that the Brown University Orchestra, a member of the American Symphony Orchestra League, has won this prestigious national honor, having received ASCAP Awards previously in 1994, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2004, and 2005.

External links

• Brown University Orchestra