Orchestras
Explore the vast creative range of today's contemporary orchestra through diverse masterworks, new music, groundbreaking guest artists and award-winning programing
About the Orchestras
One of the top orchestral programs in the United States, the ASU Orchestras explore the vast creative range of today’s contemporary orchestra and bring its audiences an engaging variety of masterworks, new music, groundbreaking guest artists, multi-media collaborations and award-winning programming. The ASU Orchestras are creating a new model for professional and pre-professional arts organizations that value the diverse potential of human creativity. The program is committed to advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion through music and the arts.
The ASU orchestra program provides its members with intensive orchestral training and professional level artistic performance experience. Led by Jeffery Meyer, director of orchestras, the orchestras perform challenging and diverse repertoire chosen to help emerging professional musicians develop a wide range of skills and aptitudes. Rich concert programming offers audiences and the greater arts community opportunities to engage with major works of the orchestral canon as well as cutting-edge works of our time. Exploring the full creative range of today’s contemporary orchestral ensemble, the ASU Symphony Orchestra and ASU Chamber Orchestra seek to perform canonical works with technical excellence and artistry while also pushing musical boundaries through innovative multi-disciplinary collaborations. The ASU Philharmonia, led by music director Julie Desbordes, provides its members an engaging and vigorous foundational orchestral experience for both music and non-music majors. The ASU Studio Orchestra functions as the laboratory orchestra for ASU’s exemplary class of graduate conductors and the Music Theatre and Opera Orchestra provides pit orchestra support for MTO productions.
The program aims to extend student learning through valuable interactions with professional artists. ASU faculty are closely involved with their students’ orchestral experience and regularly lead orchestral sectionals. The ASU orchestras also maintain a vibrant relationship with the Phoenix Symphony with frequent guest artist visits in both sectional rehearsals and side-by-side rehearsal contexts.
Towards a More Perfect UnionAn ASU Gammage and ASU Symphony theatrical, symphonic concert—with film, song, and spoken word—highlighting new works and powerful compositions that speak to the challenges of our time.
JIJI performs Harp of Nerves, a guitar concerto by Hilary Purrington, with the ASU Symphony Orchestra.
The ASU Symphony Orchestra opens the 2018-19 with Strauss’s explosive tone poem Don Juan, which launched him to international fame when he was only 25 years old.
Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres)The ASU Symphony Orchestra performs Missy Mazzoli's "Sinfonia (for Orbiting Spheres), March 2020, Ikeda Theater, Mesa Arts Center, Mesa, AZ.
