History of Longwood Symphony Orchestra
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Uniquely positioned at the crossroads of music and medicine, the
Longwood Symphony Orchestra was established in 1982 and holds
a distinctive role in Boston’s cultural landscape.
For 28
years, the orchestra has presented public concerts at New England
Conservatory’s Jordan Hall, and since 1991, each concert has raised
money for a different Community Partner, benefiting underserved
populations throughout the Greater Boston region.
Nationally
recognized for its musical quality, innovative programming, and unique
model of community engagement, the orchestra’s members are primarily
healthcare professionals from Boston's leading hospitals and
universities, including doctors, medical students, research scientists,
nurses, therapists, and caregivers--many of whom pursued music studies
before turning to medicine.
The LSO's Healing Art of Music™
program, which celebrates its 20th anniversary in the 2011-2012 season,
has raised nearly $1,000,000 for worthy causes and has been nationally
recognized with the League of American Orchestras' MetLife Award for
Excellence in Community Engagement and the highest cultural recognition
in Massachusetts, the Commonwealth Award.
The orchestra's Community Partners
for 2011-2012 are the Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program, the
Sharewood Project, the Japan Disaster Relief Fund-Boston, and the Rachel
Molly Markoff Foundation.
Off stage, the orchestra curates LSO on Call,
a community outreach initiative that brings free chamber music directly
to patients across Massachusetts in hospital wards, rehabilitation
centers, and health care facilities. The program kicked off with LSO on Call: Health and Harmony in the City,
a single-day, city-wide project that involved over 70
musicians visiting 24 different hospitals, community health centers,
hospices, and other healthcare facilities throughout the Commonwealth on
October 17, 2009. Today, the orchestra has a number of standing chamber
ensembles who present free LSO on Call performances regularly across
the city, while the LSO Chamber Players program offers chamber ensembles for hire for non-hospice purposes such as weddings, medical meetings, and conventions.
Through its Community Conversations
program, the orchestra promotes community-wide dialogue among today’s
experts in the arts and sciences on the intersection of music and
medicine. In 2009, the orchestra convened Crossing the Corpus Callosum: Neuroscience, Healing, and the Arts,
a day-long symposium that combined musical performances with lectures
on arts and healing and brought together experts from across New
England. In 2011, Crossing the Corpus Callosum II was convened
in partnership with The Lab at Harvard, and attracted more than 350
delegates. Individual orchestra musicians also regularly speak and
present on these topics around the United States and internationally.
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