User:Red714/Austin Civic Orchestra

Austin Civic Orchestra

Austin, the capital city of the state of Texas, sits on the Colorado River, and is the home to many diverse things. Austin is the home to the University of Texas and other small private universities as well as museums such as the LBJ library. Austin is also known for its music. Austin has many different musical groups, including the Austin Civic Orchestra.

By definition, an orchestra is a group of musicians who play instruments together. The first American orchestras date all the way back to the end of the eighteenth century. Some orchestras are made up of entirely professional musicians and some are not. Most major cities have a symphony orchestra. Austin is the home of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. Music is important to most people. Whether you play an instrument or just like listening to it, musical sounds generally have emotional meaning behind them. Certain aspects of music cause some people to have emotional reactions, which are necessary to maintain a healthy life.

The Austin Civic Orchestra is a non-profit organization, made up of both professional and non-professional musicians. It was founded in 1977 by Mac Payne. At the time it was just a small group, and now it is a full orchestra. The orchestra plays a wide variety of music, and it allows people who just enjoy playing a chance to continue playing. The Austin Civic Orchestra includes members anywhere from sixteen years to seventy-five, and its goal is to bring music out into the community. They generally put on eight concerts a year. The concerts include things like pop concerts in Zilker Park for families, children concerts, and they put on sponsored holiday concerts to benefit Salvation Army. The director of the Austin Civic Orchestra, Dr. Lois Ferrari says that “the orchestra has grown in both quantity and quality of musicians, and in the quality of music they produce” and that the better the group is, the more people they will attract. Dr. Ferrari has been with the orchestra for nine seasons, and she is also a music professor at Southwestern University in Georgetown.