Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

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 fifth season as Music Director in 2005-2006, Maestro Järvi conducts 14 subscription weeks in Cincinnati. He is expanding the 111-year-old orchestra’s repertoire with works never before performed by the CSO, and will lead two additional CSO recording projects with the Grammy Award-winning Telarc label.

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 maintains an active recording schedule 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 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.

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.