Our Mission

Mission Statement
The Nashville Symphony is dedicated to achieving the highest standard for excellence in musical performance and educational programs, while engaging the community, enriching audiences and shaping cultural life.

Artistic Vision Statement
Achieve recognized artistic excellence in the performance and presentation of the highest quality music, with a focus on the creation, promotion and preservation of a distinctly American repertoire.

Education Vision Statement
Engage and enrich people of all ages by exploring, experiencing and creating music.

About the Nashville Symphony

Led by Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero and President and CEO Alan D. Valentine, the GRAMMY^® Award-winning Nashville Symphony has a growing international reputation for its recordings and innovative programming.  With 140 performances annually, the 85-member Nashville Symphony is an arts leader in Nashville and beyond, offering a broad range of classical, pops and jazz concerts; special events; children’s concerts and community outreach programs.

The Nashville Symphony has received far-reaching acclaim for its 19 recordings on Naxos, the world’s leading classical label, making it one of the most active recording orchestras in the country. These recordings have received 13 total GRAMMY^® nominations and six GRAMMY^® wins, including two for Best Orchestral Performance. The Nashville Symphony has maintained a firm commitment to commissioning, performing and recording work by America’s leading composers. This dedication to adventuresome, original programming has earned the orchestra an invitation to perform at Carnegie Hall on May 12, 2012, as part of the Spring for Music festival.

Music education is a top priority for the Nashville Symphony. During the 2010/11 season, the institution reached more than 200,000 adults and children through a diverse array of education and community engagement programs. These include One Note, One Neighborhood, which provides instrument lessons, curriculum materials, professional development and other music education resources to students and teachers at underserved public schools. Working in partnership with Metro Nashville Public Schools and the W.O. Smith/Nashville Community Music School, the Nashville Symphony doubled its reach through this program in the last year.

In 2003, the Nashville Symphony broke ground on the $123.5 million Schermerhorn Symphony Center, which opened on September 9, 2006. Notable for its remarkable acoustics and distinctive architecture, this 197,000-square-foot facility has become an integral part of cultural life in Music City and is regarded as one of the finest concert halls in America.

History

The Nashville Symphony's beginnings can be traced to 1945, when World War II veteran and Nashville native Walter Sharp returned home intent on establishing a new symphony orchestra for Middle Tennessee. With the assistance of a small number of fellow music lovers, he convinced community leaders of this need and the Nashville Symphony was founded. Sharp retained William Strickland, a young conductor from New York, to serve as the first music director and conductor. Strickland was responsible for setting the high performance standards that the orchestra and its conductors have maintained to this day.

Guy Taylor (1951-1959), Willis Page (1959-1967), Thor Johnson (1967-1975) and Michael Charry (1976-1982) followed Strickland in the role of music director, with the orchestra performing at historic War Memorial Auditorium in downtown Nashville until the opening of the Tennessee Performing Arts Center in 1980. From 1983 until his death in early 2005, the Nashville Symphony flourished under the dynamic leadership of Music Director and Principal Conductor Kenneth Schermerhorn. A noted conductor, composer and music educator, Maestro Schermerhorn led the ensemble to new levels of artistic achievement, while nurturing the tradition of excellence that has characterized the symphony since its inception. Under his leadership, the orchestra performed a critically acclaimed debut concert at Carnegie Hall and undertook a sold-out East Coast tour in 2000, and it embarked on fruitful partnership with the Naxos label that has, to date, yielded 20 critically acclaimed recordings.

In 2003, the Nashville Symphony broke ground on the $123.5 million Schermerhorn Symphony Center, the orchestra's new home, which opened on September 9, 2006. This cultural center in downtown Nashville has attracted global attention for its acoustical excellence and distinctive neo-Classical architecture, and its opening marked the beginning of an exciting new chapter in the history of the Nashville Symphony. While the orchestra conducted a search for a new music director to succeed Maestro Schermerhorn, renowned conductor Leonard Slatkin assumed the post of Music Advisor. Under his guidance, the orchestra earned three GRAMMY® Awards for its recording of Joan Tower's Made in America in 2007 and produced an internationally syndicated radio program, American Encores.

With the arrival of current Music Director Giancarlo Guerrero in 2008, the Nashville Symphony has continued its spectacular rise to prominence with an ambitious schedule of recordings, commissions and world premieres. In 2011, the Nashville Symphony's recording of Michael Daugherty's Metropolis Symphony earned three GRAMMY® Awards, bringing to 6 the total number of GRAMMY® Awards out of the 13 nominations the orchestra has received since the beginning of its partnership with Naxos in 2000. In May 2012, the Nashville Symphony will return to Carnegie Hall at the invitation of the Spring for Music Festival, where it will perform an ambitious program that includes a newly commissioned Concerto for Electric Violin by pioneering composer Terry Riley, and the New York premiere of the Austin realization of Charles Ives' Universe Symphony.