Symphony Center

Symphony Center is a music complex located at 220 South Michigan Avenue in the Loop area of Chicago, Illinois. Home to the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Chicago Symphony Chorus, Civic Orchestra of Chicago, Chicago Sinfonietta, and the Institute for Learning, Access, and Training, Symphony Center includes the 2,522-seat Orchestra Hall, which dates from 1904; Buntrock Hall, a rehearsal and performance space; Grainger Ballroom, an event space overlooking Michigan Avenue and the Art Institute of Chicago; a public multi-story rotunda; tesori restaurant; and administrative offices. In June 1993, plans to significantly renovate and expand Orchestra Hall were approved and the $110 million project resulting in Symphony Center being completed from 1995 to 1997. Orchestra Hall at Symphony Center was designated a National Historic Landmark on April 19, 1994. It has been listed on the National Register of Historic Places since 1978.

History

Built in 1904, Orchestra Hall was designed by renowned Chicago architect Daniel Burnham. The new hall was specifically designed as a home for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which had previously performed in the larger Auditorium Theater. Construction began on May 1, 1904 and the first concert was held on December 14, 1904. The building has "Theodore Thomas Orchestra Hall" inscribed in its façade, after the orchestra's first music director who died less than a month after his conducting debut there. The names Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner are inscribed above the ballroom windows on the façade.

Schermerhorn Symphony Center

Schermerhorn Symphony Center is a symphony center in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Ground was broken for construction on December 3, 2003. The center formally opened on September 9, 2006, with a gala concert conducted by Leonard Slatkin and broadcast by PBS affiliates throughout the state. The center is named in honor of Kenneth Schermerhorn, who was the music director and conductor of the Nashville Symphony from 1983 until his death in 2005; the center was named before maestro Schermerhorn's death.

The 2006 Symphony Center is a prominent example of 21st century New Classical Architecture.

Architecture and design

At the heart of Schermerhorn Symphony Center is the 30,000 square feet (2,800 m²), 1,844-seat Laura Turner Concert Hall, which is home to the Nashville Symphony. The hall is of the shoebox style. It features natural lighting, which streams in through 30 soundproof, double-paned clerestory windows. Intricate symbolic motifs appear throughout the hall and the rest of the center, including irises (the Tennessee state flower), horseshoes (a tribute to the late Laura Turner's love of horses) and coffee beans (representing Nashville's Cheek family, which played a key role in the founding of the Nashville Symphony and also originally owned the Maxwell House Coffee brand).

Schermerhorn

Coordinates: 52°36′N 4°53′E / 52.600°N 4.883°E / 52.600; 4.883

Schermerhorn is a village in the Dutch province of North Holland. It is a part of the municipality of Alkmaar, and lies about 9 km south of Heerhugowaard.

Schermerhorn was a separate municipality until 1970, when it was merged with Schermer.

In 2001, the village of Schermerhorn had 874 inhabitants. The built-up area of the village was 0.17 km², and contained 360 residences. The statistical area "Schermerhorn", which also can include the peripheral parts of the village, as well as the surrounding countryside, has a population of around 1120.

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Symphony

A symphony is an extended musical composition in Western classical music, most often written by composers for orchestra. Although the term has had many meanings from its origins in the ancient Greek era, by the late 18th century the word had taken on the meaning common today: a work usually consisting of multiple distinct sections or movements, often four, with the first movement in sonata form. Symphonies are scored for string (violin, viola, cello and double bass), brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments which altogether number about 30–100 musicians. Symphonies are notated in a musical score, which contains all the instrument parts. Orchestral musicians play from parts which contain just the notated music for their instrument. A small number of symphonies also contain vocal parts (e.g., Beethoven's Ninth Symphony).

Origins

The word symphony is derived from Greek συμφωνία (symphonia), meaning "agreement or concord of sound", "concert of vocal or instrumental music", from σύμφωνος (symphōnos), "harmonious". The word referred to an astonishing variety of different things, before ultimately settling on its current meaning designating a musical form.

Nashville Symphony

The Nashville Symphony is an American symphony orchestra, based in Nashville, Tennessee. The orchestra performs 140 concerts annually.

History

In 1920, prior to the 1946 founding of the Nashville Symphony, a group of amateur and professional musicians established an orchestral ensemble in Nashville, electing Nashville Banner music critic and Vanderbilt University professor George Pullen Jackson to serve as their president and manager. Despite steady growth over the next decade, that organization fell victim to The Depression. In 1945, World War II veteran and Nashville native Walter Sharp returned home from the war intent on establishing a new symphony for Middle Tennessee. With the assistance of a small number of fellow music lovers, he convinced community leaders of this need and the Nashville Symphony was founded.

Sharp retained William Strickland, a young conductor from New York, to serve as its first music director and conductor. The orchestra performed its first concert in the fall of 1946 at War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Nashville. Over the ensuing five seasons, Strickland was responsible for setting the high performance standards that the orchestra and its conductors have maintained to this day. Guy Taylor (1951–1959), Willis Page (1959–1967), Thor Johnson (1967–1975) and Michael Charry (1976–1982) were successive music directors. During Charry's tenure, the symphony moved its subscription series from War Memorial Auditorium to Jackson Hall in the Tennessee Performing Arts Center.