Lunch Meeting December 6 - Santa Monica Symphony

 All musical program by a small chamber orchestra from the Symphony.The mission of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra is to provide high-quality, admission-free concerts from the classical and contemporary symphony repertoire to Santa Monica and West Lost Angeles. The Symphony also extends its reach into the community by performing at local schools and
community arts events, assisting the community in introducing young people to classical music and enhancing lifelong learning opportunities by providing enrichment information to adults. All of the Symphony's programming is planned to target a multi-cultural, multi-generational audience.

The Santa Monica Symphony has been a major cultural asset for the Southern California Westside community since its debut in 1945. It has grown from a fledging local orchestra into a highly acclaimed symphony orchestra which attracts music lovers from all parts of the greater Los Angeles area. Each season the Santa Monica Symphony presents four free concerts to an audience of 5,000 persons of all ages. Its repertoire of classical and contemporary
music provides well-rounded programs of wide appeal. Talented community musicians and college music students form the nucleus of the orchestra, augmented by a small group of professional musicians. Many weeks of rigorous rehearsals precede each concert, resulting in the highest artistic standards.

The Santa Monica Symphony has grown to its present excellence under the batons of six outstanding conductors/music directors: founding conductor Jacques Rachmilovich, composer Arthur Lange, Peter Meremblum, former CBS Symphony director Victor Bay, USC School of Music faculty member Yehuda Gilad, and its current conductor Dr. Allen Robert Gross of the Occidental College Music faculty. Guest soloists are a regular program feature of the symphony season. Among artists performing with the orchestra have been Sydney and Jeanne Weiss, Nathaniel Rosen, Ronald Leonard and such noted composers and guest conductors as Nelson Riddle, Miklos Rosza, David Rose, Alfred Newman, John Green, and Elmer Bernstein. 

The Santa Monica Symphony also has made multiple recordings and was the first orchestra in the United States to record the First and Second Symphonies of Tchaikovsky. Among its
other contributions have been the Young Musicians Concerts which provide performance opportunities for aspiring young musicians. The Santa Monica Symphony is a member of the Association of California Symphony Orchestra (ASCO), The American Symphony Orchestra League (ASOL), and the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce. This music is sponsored as a
public service by the City of Santa Monica and made possible in part by the Santa Monica Cultural Affairs Division. Instrumental Music for these performances funded in part by the Recording Industries Music Performance Trust Funds as arranged by Local 47 of the American Federation of Musicians, William Peterson, President. These performances are made possible in part through sponsorship of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and the Los Angeles County Music and Performing Arts Commission.

Today's Program - A concert by the Santa Monica Woodwind Quintet

 The Santa Monica Symphony Woodwind Quintet:

Allen Gross  Music Director/Conductor

 Allen Gross  Music Director/Conductor of the Santa Monica Symphony since 1991, Allen
 Gross continues to delight the public with enthusiastic and well-prepared  performances of a challenging and diverse repertory that embraces the new  and the old, the familiar and the unfamiliar. A native New Yorker, he  studied with Pierre Monteux, Walter Susskind, Sandor Salgo and Hans  Swarowsky, beginning at Queens College and UC/Berkeley before earning his
 doctorate at Stanford and continuing at the Vienna Music Academy and the  American Institute of Orchestra Conducting. From 1972-1978, he directed the  Heidelberg Castle Festival, also serving as conductor of the Junges  Kammerorchester Heidelberg and in the opera houses of Freiburg and Aachen.
 

Back in the United States, Gross directed the orchestra and opera programs at the University of Louisville before joining the music faculty at Occidental College in 1983 to serve as Director of the Occidental-Caltech Symphony Orchestra. He has since served as Music Director/Conductor of the Pasadena Young Musicians Orchestra and the Pasadena Summer Youth Chamber Orchestra and has appeared with the Los Angeles Monday Evening Concerts,
the Minnesota Composers Forum, broadcast concerts from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and honors orchestras in California and Nevada. Last Season, Mr. Gross returned from China, where he conducted a concert with the  orchestra of the Shenwang Conservatory of Music. The past two summers, he  has traveled and concertized in Italy, the Czech Republic and other Eastern European countries with members of the Santa Monica Symphony.

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