University Symphony Orchestra History

Founded in 1923 as the California Music League, the University Symphony Orchestra is the oldest performing arts ensemble in the University of California system. Throughout its 79 year history, the orchestra has provided students and other members of the campus community with the opportunity to expand their musical talents, while at the same time benefiting the campus and urban community. The orchestra has long been an incubator for conductors, composers, and instrumental musicians alike. Past conductors have included Modeste Alloo, Albert Elkus, Joaquin Nin-Culmell, Michael Senturia, and Jung Ho-Pak. David Milnes has served as the University Symphony Orchestra’s Music Director since 1996.
Rehearsing and performing works of faculty and graduate student composers has long been a core mission for the orchestra; each season the orchestra features the world premiere of a major new work by a Berkeley composer. Many of these young composers have gone on to win international composing competitions. In addition, the orchestra has premiered several works of established composers. In 1936, the University Symphony Orchestra gave the United States premiere of Paul Hindemith’s News of the Day. Both Percy Grainger and Arthur Bliss conducted the orchestra in performances of their own works in 1939 and 1940. Similarly, the student ensemble gave the American premiere of Ernest Bloch’s Concerto Grosso II in 1953.

After returning from his Carnegie Hall debut in 1937, an eighteen-year-old violinist by the name of Isaac Stern performed with the ensemble on November 13, 1938, in Saint Saens’ Violin Concerto in B minor. Other distinguished soloists have included violinist Nathan Rubin, who later became concertmaster of the Oakland Symphony, and bassist James Berdahl, Director of the Cal Marching Band from 1952 to 1973. One orchestra member would later become one of the world’s most distinguished oboists. John de Lancie performed with the ensemble from 1936 until winning a position as Principal Oboe of the Pittsburgh Symphony under Fritz Reiner in 1940. After serving in World War II, where he befriended composer Richard Strauss (who subsequently wrote an oboe concerto as a result of the meeting), he joined the Philadelphia Orchestra under Eugene Ormandy in 1946 and retired in 1977 to become director of the Curtis Institute of Music, a post he held until retirement in 1985.
The University Symphony Orchestra now performs several concerts a semester, supports a chamber orchestra, and continues during the summer months as the Summer Symphony. An annual concerto competition results in concerto performances by the orchestra’s leading soloists. Members of the San Francisco Symphony regularly lead coachings for each section. And the orchestra recently recorded and released its first compact disc, Into the Woods – Brahms, Sibelius, and Hindemith.