Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra

This orchestra of professional musicians began 33 years ago as a community orchestra and became a fully professional paid orchestra 25 years ago.

    

             The Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra began as a community orchestra named the Adirondack Concert Orchestra. In 1983 the orchestra was incorporated as the Glens Falls Symphony Orchestra, Inc., a non-profit cultural organization. Hugh Allen Wilson - legendary local keyboard performer, college professor and church musician - began a 14 year tenure as music director in 1984. During his tenure the orchestra performed a diverse repertoire, creating an arc of musical eras spanning from the St. Matthew Passion of Bach to its first commissioned work, Adirondack Light by Hilary Tann.

             In 1986 the Glens Falls Symphony became a fully professional orchestra employing members of the region’s American Federation of Musicians and a part time paid orchestra manager. In 1998 Robert B. Rosoff, a long time board member, was named full time Executive Director.

 Upon Maestro Wilson’s retirement in 1998, the orchestra engaged in a two-year music director search. The result of this community wide search effort was the appointment of Charles Peltz as music director and conductor staring with the 2000-2001 season. In the ten seasons since Maestro Peltz’s appointment, the range of performances, now more than double in number from the 1998-1999 season, reflects a vigor and commitment to bringing great music to the Glens Falls Region. Two summer concerts in local parks draw enthusiastic audiences numbering in the thousands. Children’s concerts teach youngsters and delight their parents. The Symphony’s jazz credentials were enhanced by appearing with internationally famous composer/performer David Amram at the 2001 Lake George Jazz Weekend.                  The orchestra gave the world première of Made in America by Grawemeyer Prize and Grammy winning composer Joan Tower on October 2, 2005, a musical event of national significance. Through the efforts of the Executive Director and his work as board member of the League of American Orchestras, the Glens Falls Symphony joined 64 other orchestras, with at least one in every state, in a consortium funded by the Ford Motor Company Fund, with additional funding from the NEA, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, JPMorgan Chase, Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund, and The Amphion Foundation. With that performance, the Symphony began an ongoing program named MUSICBRIDGE that relates the music of the past with contemporary music.      

The 2008-2009 season brought us back to a newly renovated Glens Falls High School auditorium with greatly enhanced sound and lighting systems as well as improved sight lines. We celebrated in concert the birthdays of contemporary composer Joan Tower and the 150th birth anniversary of opera diva and Bolton Landing resident Marcella Sembrich. Scheduling problems sent us to the First Presbyterian Church of Glens Falls to present Cleveland International Piano Competition silver medalist Yaron Kohlberg, and to Saratoga Springs Middle School to present the previously postponed Ibert flute concerto with GFSO principal flutist Yvonne Chavez Hansbrough.

           The 2009-2010 season was a smash in every way. We grew to the largest subscriber base in many years and set attendance records at each of our five regular concerts. Pulitzer Prize winning composer Joseph Schwantner told our audience for the first concert, at the premiere of his work, Chasing Light…, “This orchestra is one of the great orchestras in the country.” The Glens Falls Symphony Children’s Chorus, directed for the first time by Carol Ann Elze-Sussdorff, delighted us with a Celtic Christmas before a nearly sold out house. We closed by fulfilling a long time dream of the orchestra and its leadership with the magnificent Mahler, 1st Symphony and joined in as the audience leaped to its feet at the last chords.