Newton Symphony Orchestra

The Newton Symphony Orchestra, founded in 1967, is a 70-member mostly non-professional regional orchestra based in Newton, Massachusetts.[1] The Newton Symphony Orchestra has toured in a variety of locations, including Carnegie Hall. The current music director of the orchestra is James M. Orent.

The NSO has championed new music, including commissions and world premieres of works by noted American composers, such as Gunther Schuller, Charles Fussell, and Ethan Wickman. Fussell's Wilde, premiered by the NSO and the baritone Sanford Sylvan in 1990, was a finalist for the 1991 Pulitzer Prize in Music.[2] The NSO also commissioned and performed Sinfonia da Requiem: For the Victims of the Holocaust, by the Uruguayan composer León Biriotti, which was designated by The Improper Bostonian as the third best Classical Music Performance of that year in Boston. In October 2008, the NSO gave the East Coast premiere of Ethan Wickman's Solitary Deserts of Infinite Space.

The Newton Symphony Orchestra has attracted an esteemed collection of international and local soloists, including the Spanish guitarist Angel Romero, the Hungarian violinist Dénes Zsigmondy, the marimba player Nanae Mimura, and the cellist Sebastian Baverstam. NSO opera performances attract well known artists in the field, including Adina Aaron and Benjamin Warschawski from the New York City Opera, and Barbara Kilduff and Leah Wool of the Metropolitan Opera. Recent instrumental soloists have included the violinist Bin Huang and the pianist Michael Lewin, a Newton resident who is the Chairman of the Boston Conservatory Piano Faculty.