Orchestra Profiles
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New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and Albuquerque Youth Symphony
ORP: January 2006
The New Mexico Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1932. Originally called the Albuquerque Civic Symphony, it acquired its current name in 1966. The ACS presented its debut performance, conducted by its founder, Grace Thompson Edmister, for an audience of 2,000 at the University of New Mexico. Today the NMSO provides a strong musical base for the state: it is New Mexico's largest year-round performing arts organization as well as its largest non-government provider of music education. In February 2001, the NMSO established the Symphony School program, through which economically disadvantaged young musicians can have weekly lessons from NMSO musicians at only $1 per lesson. Each season, over 130,000 people come to hear NMSO concerts, of which approximately half are free Family Concerts presented throughout the Albuquerque area. Music Director Guillermo Figueroa is in his sixth season with the NMSO.
The Albuquerque Youth Symphony celebrated its 50th anniversary in 2005–2006, a season filled with special projects such as an alumni reunion weekend, Midori's residency, a composer-in-residence program, collaborative concerts with the NMSO, and a concert tour of Brazil. The establishment of the local youth orchestra in 1955 was part of a collaborative project between the Albuquerque Public Schools and the University of New Mexico, and continued as such until the early 1990s, when federal budget cuts affecting the public schools compelled the AYS to incorporate as a self-governing organization. Over the past five decades, the AYS program has expanded from its single founding ensemble of students in grades 7–12 to five youth orchestras of age levels ranging from third graders to high-school-age musicians. Gabriel Gordon was appointed Music Director in 2007. The AYS Program's orchestras present approximately ten concerts per season.