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IU Philharmonic: WFIU's Artist of Month for September

Orchestra in performance

WFIU's Artist of the Month for September is the Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra. Comprised of many of Indiana University's top music students, the ensemble is the premier orchestra among the six major orchestras maintained by the Jacobs School of Music.

The IU Philharmonic Orchestra has served as an ambassador for the university regionally, nationally, and abroad. The ensemble makes regular appearances at the Midwest Band and Orchestra Clinic in Chicago and has travelled across Indiana for IU's Moveable Feast of the Arts series, which is designed to showcase the university's cultural resources to Hoosier communities and IU campuses across the state. The Jacobs ensemble has also performed at Carnegie Hall in New York and at the opening of the Bastille Opera House in Paris.

Here on the IU campus, the Philharmonic Orchestra typically performs five to six concerts throughout the academic year. The ensemble frequently collaborates with members of the Jacobs School of Music faculty and has featured an array of guest artists and alumni, including Gary Hoffman, Sarah Kapustin, Peter Serkin, and Joshua Bell. In 1972, composer and conductor Aaron Copland led the ensemble in a concert of various works including his Third Symphony. On September 14, 1999 the Philharmonic was featured in the 75th Birthday Celebration for famed cellist and faculty member Janos Starker. The ensemble featured Starker as a soloist and was conducted by maestros Emilio W. Colón and Mstislav Rostropovich. Over the past 60 years the ensemble has appeared under the baton of Lorin Maazel, Kurt Masur, Gerard Schwarz, Robert Shaw, Stanislaw Skrowaczewski, Leonard Bernstein and other leading conductors.

Recordings of the ensemble are archived in the William and Gayle Cook Music Library and date back to 1951, when the orchestra was established under the baton of Ernst Hoffman. Currently, the ensemble shares direction amongst Cliff Colnot, David Effron, Arthur Fagen, Uriel Segal, and various guest conductors including the internationally renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin, who became the Arthur R. Metz Foundation Conductor at Indiana University's Jacobs School of Music in 2007. The IU Philharmonic's first performance of the 2013-2014 Season is scheduled for Wednesday, September 11 at 8pm at the Musical Arts Center on the Indiana University, Bloomington campus. Under the direction of David Effron, the concert will feature works by Debussy, Nicolai, and Brahms.

WFIU will feature performances by the Indiana University Philharmonic Orchestra in our classical music programming throughout the month of September.

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