Omaha Symphony Orchestra

The Omaha Symphony is a professional orchestra performing more than 200 concerts and presentations annually in Omaha, Nebraska and throughout the orchestra's home region. The orchestra was established in 1921. It is considered a major American orchestra, classified under "Group 2" among the League of American Orchestras, which ranks symphony orchestras by annual budget, with Group 1 the largest and Group 8 the smallest. Its annual budget in 2012 was approximately $7 million. The symphony has a $30 million endowment. The orchestra's home and principal venue is the 2,005-seat Holland Performing Arts Center, the $100 million purpose-built facility designed by Polshek Partnership that opened in October 2005. In a review, The Dallas Morning News called the Holland "one of the country's best-sounding" symphony halls.

Its music director since 2005 is Thomas Wilkins. Wilkins lives in Omaha. He also is principal guest conductor of the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra, which is under the auspices of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. Wilkins also is the Germeshausen Family and Youth Concerts Conductor for the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 2011; the Boston Globe named him among the "Best People and Ideas of 2011." Before his Omaha post, Wilkins was resident conductor of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. Since the 1992/93 season, Ernest Richardson has served as the Omaha Symphony's resident conductor. Prior to coming to Omaha, Richardson was a violist with the Phoenix Symphony.

In 2002, under the baton of then-Music Director Victor Yampolsky, the orchestra performed the world premiere of Philip Glass's Piano Concerto No. 2 (After Lewis and Clark). It regularly performs with some of the world's most highly regarded musicians, including Itzhak Perlman, Pinchas Zukerman, Joshua Bell and Renee Fleming, whose 1990 performance of Maria Padilla with Opera Omaha, for which the Omaha Symphony is the resident orchestra, is considered a major debut and a springboard for her noted career.

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