User:Lindafowler/The Princeton Symphony Orchestra

The Princeton Symphony Orchestra is the only resident professional orchestra in greater Princeton, N.J. It presents its subscription series in historic Richardson Auditorium on the campus of Princeton University. Led by Music Director Rossen Milanov, the PSO performs classical masterworks, introduces music by contemporary composers, and educates area schoolchildren by exposing them to their first orchestral experience as part of the BRAVO! program. The PSO also presents a chamber music series and related lectures and other concert events throughout the region.

History of the Orchestra
Founded in 1980 as The Little Orchestra of New Jersey by the late Portia Sonnenfeld, the ensemble originally presented two or three informal concerts each year. The orchestra was restructured in 1983. Just prior to Sonnenfeld's death in 1986, the Board of Trustees selected Mark Laycock as Music Director of the Princeton Chamber Orchestra, later renamed the Princeton Chamber Symphony, and finally, the Princeton Symphony Orchestra. Laycock concluded his long tenure with the appointment of Rossen Milanov as Music Director in June 2009. During the search process, which was chaired by Robert L. Annis, Dean and Director of Westminster Choir College of Rider University, guest conductors led the Classical Series, pops concerts, and BRAVO! performances.

The PSO presents a five-concert Classical Series in Richardson Auditorium, and a Chamber Series featuring members of the orchestra in small-ensemble performances in the greater Princeton community. The annual 'PSO POPS! The Broadway Concert' debuted in October 2004, with Broadway and television stars Rebecca Luker and Stephen Bogardus. Other seasons featured Barbara Cook, Teri Dale Hansen and Norm Lewis. 'PSO POPS! The Holiday Concert' is held each winter.

In addition to performing orchestral masterworks, in recent years the PSO has championed the work of leading modern composers. The Clarinet Concerto by Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Paul Moravec, a work commissioned by the PSO, was performed in January 2009 with David Krakauer as guest soloist. Another Pulitzer Prize winner, composer John Harbison, was in residence with the PSO in the fall of 2009 for a tribute and program of his works. During the 2010-2011 season, the orchestra will collaborate with Princeton composers Steven Mackey and Derek Bermel.

Past seasons have included a guest-conducting engagement with Gunther Schuller; a performance and master class with British cellist Steven Isserlis ; a concert production of Verdi's La Traviata; a New Year's Eve gala Operafest at the State Theatre in New Brunswick, N.J.; a three-year Sacred Music Series in collaboration with the Princeton Theological Seminary; the American premiere of Daylight Divine by Augusta Read Thomas; and a Holocaust Remembrance Concert. In October 2009, motivational speaker, conductor and author Benjamin Zander was in residence with the orchestra for a seminar, panel discussion and performance, which he conducted.

Among other arts institutions and community organizations that have collaborated with the PSO are American Repertory Ballet, the Princeton University Art Museum, the Princeton Public Library, the Institute for Advanced Study, the New Jersey Tap Ensemble and Westminster Choir College.

The PSO also produces BRAVO!, an in-school educational series of children's concerts, reaching more than 10,000 schoolchildren each year with programs that introduce students to the instruments of the orchestra and the joy of classical music. The programs, hosted by the musicians of the PSO, sequentially introduce the four instrument families. Each year, the in-school programs culminate in a full orchestra concert at Richardson Auditorium, attended by thousands of children.

BRAVO! initiatives include a Master Class Series for advanced high school instrumentalists, taught by artists such as the violinist Midori, and a Conducting Master Class for youth orchestras. The Listen Up! program is designed to bring middle-school students to orchestra performances, inviting them to create art in response to what they hear at a concert.

The PSO’s Chamber Series showcases the intimate scale of chamber music repertoire, in different combinations of instruments, performed by PSO musicians. The afternoon series is held four times a year at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and at the Windrows and Stonebridge at Montgomery retirement communities.

Artists Who Have Appeared with the PSO

 * American Boychoir School


 * Leon Bates


 * John Chancellor


 * Joan LaBarbara


 * Chantal Juillet


 * Joel Quarrington


 * Arve Tellefsen


 * Vladimir Ovchinnikov


 * Soyeon Lee


 * Meagan Miller


 * David Kim


 * Susan Narucki


 * Jeffrey Solow

Music Director Rossen Milanov
In June 2009, the PSO appointed Rossen Milanov, a Juilliard-trained musician from Bulgaria, to the post of Music Director. Praised by critics as one of the most promising figures in the upcoming generation of conductors, he "bears watching by anyone who cares about the future of music," according to the Chicago Tribune. Milanov is Associate Conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra and Artistic Director of the Philadelphia Orchestra at the Mann Center for the Performing Arts (2006).

Milanov is also the Music Director of the Symphony in C -- a training orchestra in Camden, N.J. -- and the New Symphony Orchestra in his native city of Sofia, Bulgaria. He has received the Award for Extraordinary Contribution to Bulgarian Culture, presented by the Bulgarian Ministry of Culture, and was chosen as Bulgaria's Musician of the Year in 2005.

Highlights of Milanov's career include debuts with the Singapore Symphony Orchestra, the Komische Oper Orchestra, Berlin, the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra, the Charlotte Symphony Orchestra and the Royal Swedish Opera Orchestra (with a ballet triple-bill).

In the U.S., Milanov has led concerts at the Aspen Music Festival, the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra and the Grand Teton Music Festival. Internationally he has worked with the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, the BBC Symphony Orchestra, the NHK Symphony Orchestra, the Lucerne Festival Orchestra, the Residentie Orchestra, the Rotterdam Philharmonic Orchestra , and the Orchestre de la Suisse Romande, in a new production of Le Sacre du Printemps and Petrushka.

With the Philadelphia Orchestra, Milanov's accomplishments have included concerts at the orchestra's summer series at the Mann Center, at the Bravo! Vail Valley Music Festival, and in subscription concerts at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts in Philadelphia, including performances of John Adams' Violin Concerto with Leila Josefowicz , Saint-Saëns' Cello Concerto with Yo-Yo Ma, and the world premiere of Nicholas Maw's English Horn Concerto, commissioned by the orchestra for Elizabeth Starr Masoudnia.

Milanov has conducted Argento's Postcard from Morocco, and Tchaikovsky's Iolanta, both with the Curtis Institute of Music. In 2008, summer concert performances of La Bohème with the Philadelphia Orchestra, both at the Mann Center and at Bravo!, were received favorably. He has worked with the Bulgarian bass Nicolai Ghiaurov, and, as Chief Conductor of the Bulgarian National Radio Symphony Orchestra, led the orchestra in a European tour featuring Bulgarian mezzo-soprano Vesselina Kasarova.

His recording of works by the Russian composer Alla Pavlova with the Moscow Philharmonic Orchestra is available on the Naxos label, and a live performance of Shostakovich's Symphony No. 15 with the Philadelphia Orchestra is available online.

Milanov studied conducting at the Juilliard School (where he received the Bruno Walter Memorial Scholarship), the Curtis Institute of Music, Duquesne University, and the National Academy of Music (Bulgaria).

Music Directors of the PSO

 * Portia Sonnenfeld, founder


 * Mark Laycock (1986-2007)


 * Rossen Milanov (2009-)