New England String Orchestra

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826 Boylston Street
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
phone: (617) 566-0430
fax: (617) 232-5216

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Mission Statement

History

History of New England String Orchestra

The New England String Ensemble was founded in 1993 by violinist Peter Stickel and cellist John Bumstead to champion strings in performance and education. Stickel and Bumstead were responding to the decline in number and quality of string programs in public schools and also seeing the orchestra as a vehicle to showcase the string orchestra literature, much of which had been neglected. The founders envisioned a world-class string orchestra that supported string education through an interweaving of performance and education: musicians going into schools, string students and their families coming into concerts, special mentoring opportunities, and the showcasing of the most advanced students in regular subscription concerts.

The New England String Ensemble (NESE) began its inaugural concert season in 1994 under the guidance of founding music director, Christophe Chagnard, a native of Paris and resident of Seattle who commuted to Boston for four years to help build the orchestra. Mr. Chagnard is also the co-founder and music director of Seattle's award-winning Northwest Sinfonietta.

The inaugural performance in September 1994 at Endicott College in Beverly, MA, (A Musical Journey into Night) received international attention, including pieces in the New York Times and newspapers in Seattle, Paris and Tel Aviv as well as a feature by Paul Harvey, for its lift-imitating-art triumph over a thunderstorm-induced power failure.

In 1997 the Board of Directors embarked on a series of retreats called "Vision 2000" recognizing the merits and importance of engaging a local music director who could be involved in working with the Ensemble on a daily basis. The fifth season (1998-1999) featured four finalists in the conducting search from which noted vocalist and conductor Susan Davenny Wyner was chosen to lead the orchestra into its sixth season.

The expansion from a north Boston focus to a New England-wide mission with a Boston-Cambridge home-base was another priority in the Vision 2000 plan. That sixth season therefore also featured a move into Cambridge with a series at First Church Congregational at the invitation of internationally renowned keyboard artist Peter Sykes. A gradual migration into Sanders Theatre at Harvard and then to Boston's Jordan Hall at New England Conservatory completed the progression.

Under the direction of Ms. Wyner the artistic success of NESE was evidenced locally by growing audiences, high critical acclaim, and performance invitations, such as an invitation to the Bank of America Celebrity Series in 2004-05. National recognition included a Koussevitzky commission - one of seven in the United States awarded in 2003-04. Ms. Wyner resigned her position in April 2005 to pursue opera.

To the delight of players, audience members, supporters, staff and the Board of Directors, on July 1, 2005 Mr. Federico Cortese was engaged a conductor for the 2005-06 season. He was subsequently named Music Director in 2006. From the moment of his debut as Assistant Conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra (BSO) in 1998, stepping in a short notice to conduct Beethoven Symphony No. 9 in place of an ailing Seiji Ozawa, Mr. Cortese's Work with the BSO was widely praised. His other appointments include Music Director and Associate Conductor of the Spoleto Festival in Italy; Assistant Conductor to Daniele Gatti at the Orchestra dell'Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome, and Assistant Conductor to Robert Spano at the Brooklyn Philharmonic. Additionally, he has served as Music Director of the Boston Youth Symphony Orchestras since 1999.

Continuing to grow in both artistic excellence and variety of repetoire, the name of the organization was changed to New England String Orchestra in 2010 to better reflect the organization, both in size and repetoire.