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November 3, 2021
Musicians in the Spotlight
Musicians have been taking new roles at orchestras during the pandemic, commissioning and performing new music, stepping up as soloists, and curating and filming performances, often outdoors—even in an airplane hangar.
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November 18, 2021
Redefining the Canon
Redefining the Canon, a field-wide effort from nonprofit Boulanger Initiative, aims to diversify the most widely-used orchestral audition excerpts by offering technically-comparable excerpts by historically underrepresented composers.
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November 3, 2021
Return to Pops
Pops artists, like the orchestras they perform with, took a hit last season. Now they are beginning to return to orchestra stages across the country and hitting a note of realistic optimism. Ten pops artists reveal how they have fared, what they have missed, what they most look forward to, and what they have planned for the season ahead.
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November 3, 2021
Aiming for a More Inclusive Canon
In an excerpt from his new book, Dvořák’s Prophecy and the Vexed Fate of Classical Music, Joseph Horowitz examines why classical music in America “stayed white” and failed to become more inclusive.
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November 3, 2021
Voices of Hope
Last spring, as coronavirus positivity rates dipped in the U.S. and COVID-19 vaccines became widely available, orchestras’ fall season announcements included a hopeful sign: programs featuring orchestra and chorus. The sound of massed voices and orchestra has been sorely missed for more than a year, but with worries about the health risks of singing and uncertainty over Delta and other new variants, presenting Beethoven’s Ninth or Mahler’s “Resurrection” Symphony can be a tricky balancing act.
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April 28, 2021
Native Sounds
Music by composers from Navajo, Cherokee, Chickasaw, and many other tribes is increasingly being performed and commissioned by orchestras as they seek to broaden the range of music they perform. While these artists are working in a classical European tradition, they embrace their cultural heritage and see music as a way to express Indigenous worldviews.
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June 28, 2021
Orchestrating a Better Future
Few activities are as central to orchestras as auditions for musicians. “Blind” auditions, in which musicians perform behind a screen to shield their identity, were instituted in the 1970s to redress the longstanding exclusion of people of color and women from orchestras. While blind auditions were successful in some regards, particularly in increasing the proportion of women musicians at orchestras, the percentage of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) musicians has not risen significantly over time.
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January 14, 2022
Forward Thinking: The Roots of Success
Pianist Lang Lang is an international star—but he forged his career here in the U.S., where he moved as a teenager to study and then performed with American orchestras large and small. It was a formative experience that he still values, as he resumes touring, runs a foundation that connects young people around the world with classical music, and takes on new artistic challenges. League President and CEO Simon Woods interviews Lang Lang.
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June 16, 2022
2022 Orchestra Repertoire Report
A new report from the Institute for Composer Diversity, produced in partnership with the League of American Orchestras, finds significant increases in works by composers of color and women composers being performed by American orchestras.
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December 1, 2013
Orchestra Repertoire Report (ORR) 2012-2013
In 1970, the League of American Orchestras began to track member orchestras’ programming through its Orchestra Repertoire Report (ORR), in order to answer queries from grantmakers, journalists, musicologists, historians, and member orchestras.
