About the Orchestra

Founded in 1962 by legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski, the American Symphony Orchestra continues its mission to demystify orchestral music, and make it accessible and affordable to everyone. Under music director Leon Botstein, the ASO has pioneered what The Wall Street Journal called “a new concept in orchestras,” presenting concerts curated around various themes drawn from the visual arts, literature, politics, and history, and unearthing rarely-performed masterworks for well-deserved revival. These concerts are performed in the Vanguard Series at Carnegie Hall.

The orchestra also performs in the celebrated concert series Classics Declassified at Peter Norton Symphony Space, and is the resident orchestra of the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, where it appears in a winter subscription series as well as Bard’s annual SummerScape Festival and the Bard Music Festival. In 2010, the American Symphony became the resident orchestra of The Collegiate Chorale, performing regularly in the Chorale’s New York concert series. The orchestra has made several tours of Asia and Europe, and has performed in countless benefits for organizations including the Jerusalem Foundation and PBS.

ASO’s award-winning music education program, Music Notes, integrates symphonic music into core humanities classes in high schools across the tri-state area.

In addition to many albums released on the Telarc, New World, Bridge, Koch, and Vanguard labels, many live performances by the American Symphony are now available for digital download. In many cases, these are the only existing recordings of some of the rare works that have been rediscovered in ASO performances.

VIOLIN
Erica Kiesewetter, Concertmaster
Richard Rood, Principal Violin II
Diane Bruce
John Connelly
Patricia Davis
Suzanne Gilman
Yana Goichman
Yukie Handa
Ashley Horne
Sophia Kessinger
Jennifer Kim
Elizabeth Kleinman
Ann Labin
Katherine Livolsi-Landau
Lucy Morganstern
Wende Namkung
Elizabeth Nielsen
Ragga Petursdottir
Dorothy Strahl
Heidi Stubner
James Tsao
Alexander Vselensky
Robert Zubrycki

VIOLA
Nardo Poy, Principal
Adria Benjamin
Martha Brody
John Dexter
Crystal Garner
Shelley Holland-Moritz
Rachel Riggs
Veronica Salas
Debra Shufelt-Dine
Sally Shumway

CELLO
Eugene Moye, Principal
Diane Barere
Sarah Carter
Roberta Cooper
Annabelle Hoffman
Maureen Hynes
Dorothy Lawson
Eliana Mendoza
Alberto Parrini

BASS
John Beal, Principal
Louis Bruno
Peter Donovan
Jordan Frazier
Louise Koby
Rick Ostrovsky
Jack Wenger

FLUTE
Laura Conwesser, Principal
Rie Schmidt
Diva Goodfriend-Koven, piccolo

OBOE
Alexandra Knoll
Melanie Feld, English horn

CLARINET
Laura Flax, Principal
Marina Sturm

BASSOON
Charles McCracken, Principal
Marc Goldberg
Gilbert Dejean, contrabassoon

HORN
David Smith
Zohar Schondorf
Lawrence DiBello

TRUMPET
Carl Albach, Principal
John Dent
John Sheppard

TROMBONE
Richard Clark, Principal
Kenneth Finn
Jeffrey Caswell, bass trombone

TUBA
Kyle Turner, Principal

TIMPANI
Benjamin Herman, Principal

PERCUSSION
Jonathan Haas, Principal
Kory Grossman

HARP
Sara Cutler, Principal

PIANO
Elizabeth Wright, Principal

LIBRARIAN
Marc Cerri



Section strings listed alphabetically