Hartford Symphony Orchestra

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra (HSO) is an American orchestra based in Hartford, Connecticut. The Hartford Symphony is the second largest orchestra in New England and is widely recognized as one of America’s leading regional orchestras.

The HSO presents more than 230 concerts annually to audiences numbering more than 110,000, including the Masterworks Series, Pops! Series, Sunday Serenades, Lincoln Financial Discovery Concerts, Symphony in the Schools, Musical Dialogues, and more. In addition, the HSO presents a tremendously popular summer series, the Talcott Mountain Music Festival, every summer in Simsbury, Connecticut.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra’s extensive array of Education and Community Activities serves more than 22,000 individuals in Hartford and surrounding communities annually.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra is supported by nearly 4,500 subscribers and over 2,000 donors. The organization has been greatly strengthened by an extensive level of communication and involvement with its musicians that has become a national model for orchestral governance. Now representing 15% of the Board of Directors and one-third of its Executive Committee, musicians also serve on all major Board committees.

The Hartford Symphony Orchestra named Carolyn Kuan as its tenth music director in January 2011; she is the first woman and youngest person to hold this title. She began her tenure with the HSO in the fall of 2011.

The Federal government established the Federal Emergency Relief Corporation, which included a program to help struggling musicians through the economic depression. Amateur musician and businessman Francis Goodwin II, considered today to be the “Father of the Hartford Symphony,” seized the opportunity to bring orchestral music to the city of Hartford. His Federal “Orchestra Application” was accepted, resulting in the creation of the Hartford Symphony Orchestra, then known as the “Civic Symphony Orchestra of Hartford.” Created as a public service, the orchestra gave two free concerts per week, and the musicians rehearsed every day for a weekly salary of $21. The Civic Symphony Orchestra of Hartford performed its first concert on November 20, 1934 under music director Angelo Coniglione at West Middle School in Hartford. Although this first concert did not bring in a huge audience, it was generally considered to be a promising start to the orchestra’s future.

The Federal government disbanded the Federal Emergency Relief Corporation in 1935 and instead began a larger program called the Federal Music Project (FMP). This project was a subdivision of the Works Progress Administration (WPA) of the New Deal. Many orchestras in the United States were born out of the funding from this project. To the Hartford Symphony, being a part of the Federal Music Project meant they could pay musicians higher wages and charge a moderate admission of 25¢.

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