Concerts

The ASO presents a free concert as part of the Picnic Performance series at Bryant Park with a program of music sourced from dance salons, opera houses, cabaret, and the silver screen. For our third consecutive year debuting our season at Bryant Park, the American Symphony Orchestra is pleased to present, Beyond the Hall, a program exploring music that…

The ASO will co-present a free Saturday matinee with Kupferberg Center for the Arts at Queens College/CUNY. Beyond the Hall explores music that draws its inspiration from outside the traditional concert setting. From the dance salon (Florence Price’s Suite of Dances) and the theater (Weill’s Threepenny Opera and Bernstein’s On the Town), and from the opera stage (Joplin’s Treemonisha), to the silver screen (Herrmann’s film score for…

Long associated with the instrumental genre, Carl Phillipp Emanuel Bach is most well-known for his concertos, sonatas, and symphonies. These works earned him a leading position in the years of the Rococo period, bridging the Baroque and Classical eras. Less well-known are his vocal compositions: his oratorios—a genre he explored only twice—are rarely, if ever, performed.…

The ASO’s first concert at the new David Geffen Hall focuses on music of composers who came of age in the 1920s. Chief among them was Edgard Varèse. Varèse’s symphonic poem Arcana (1925-27) explores the mysterious and powerful nature of the constellations above. Varèse took his inspiration for the work from topics of alchemy and…

Completed in 1893, Richard Strauss’s first opera to receive a premiere is rarely performed today. The ASO’s presentation marks its first performance in New York City in this century. A riveting story of love, guilt and renunciation, Guntram reveals a young Strauss positioning himself as the successor to Wagner. In his very first opera, Strauss’s…

Join us for a performance by a string quartet of ASO musicians on the Lobby Stage at the Perelman Performing Arts Center. As part of the Park Avenue Artists’ Spotlight series, The Glenwood Quartet will bring the spirit of the American Symphony Orchestra (ASO) to this program by celebrating underperformed works alongside a well-loved masterpiece.…

Join us for a performance by a woodwind quintet of ASO musicians, with pieces by American composers including William Grant Still, Amy Beach, and John Philip Sousa. Curated by ASO member Gilbert Dejean, the works on the program draw inspiration from across the Americas, from folk melodies to jazz. This performance is part of a…

A string quartet of ASO musicians performs works by Coleridge-Taylor Perkinson, William Grant Still, and Antonín Dvořák, in a program curated by violinist Ashley Horne, a longtime member of the American Symphony Orchestra. In the curation of this program, Horne has combined compositions that reflect several of his own significant personal and musical connections to them. Horne worked…