Participation in the Brown University Orchestra is open to all members of the Brown community: undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff.
Participation in the Brown University Orchestra is open to all members of the Brown community: undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff.
Faculty, staff and members of the Brown and RISD communities may also be allowed to participate depending upon what openings are available after every effort has been made to place Brown and RISD students in ensembles. All prospective and returning participants are required to audition each September.
Course:
MUSC 0610
Director:
Mark Seto
Participation in the Brown University Orchestra is open to all members of the Brown community: undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and staff. Members of the RISD community are also eligible to participate. Musicians from the local community are welcome to audition and may be invited to join if openings exist.
Each fall, all musicians interested in joining the orchestra are required to audition, including returning members. Individuals who are abroad or away during the fall should audition at the start of the spring semester.
The audition will take approximately 10 minutes and consist of the following parts (no sight reading or scales will be required):
Anyone who plays a secondary instrument, like piccolo, English horn, bass clarinet, etc., is encouraged to bring it to the audition and prepare the associated excerpt, if possible. If you plan to audition on more than one instrument and think you will need more than 10 minutes, sign up for two audition times (preferably back-to-back).
Rosters and seating assignments will be announced once all auditions have been completed. Rotating seating is used in the string sections, with new assignments for each concert. Principal string players are selected from the pool of principals determined by the auditions. Seating in the rest of the orchestra rotates to varying degrees according to each section. No distinction is made between music and non-music concentrators when determining seating; our philosophy is to judge chair placement based on the fall audition and subsequent performance in rehearsals and concerts.
Incoming students are encouraged to visit the Orchestra Open House (held every September in the Lindemann Performing Arts Center), where they can meet BUO conductor as well as upperclassmen in the orchestra. Please audition! We accept large numbers of new members every year, and chair placement is not determined by class year. First-year students have the same shot as everyone else who auditions. Although orchestra is a time commitment, students taking the most difficult course loads at Brown still find the time to perform.
Music for an audition can be obtained at Orwig Music Library, located on the south side of campus next to Perkins Hall. Instruments to use or practice on for an orchestra audition (especially large instruments such as the marimba, harp, tuba, etc.) can be arranged by emailing the conductor. If you have any questions or concerns about auditions, don’t hesitate to ask.
A practical study of the orchestral repertoire from Bach to the present, offered through rehearsals and performances. Enrollment is by audition and written permission. Restricted to skilled instrumentalists. May be repeated for credit. Written permission required. S/NC.
Mark Seto leads a wide-ranging musical life as a conductor, scholar, teacher, and violinist. He is Director of the Brown University Orchestra and Associate Teaching Professor in Music at Brown University, where he teaches courses in music history, theory, and conducting. He is also Artistic Director and Conductor of The Chelsea Symphony in New York City.
Since Seto’s tenure with The Chelsea Symphony began in 2011, the ensemble has strengthened its commitment to new music by programming dozens of world premieres and establishing an annual competition for early-career composers; performed at Lincoln Center for the red carpet premiere of Mozart in the Jungle, the Golden Globe-winning Amazon Original series starring Gael García Bernal, Bernadette Peters, and Malcolm McDowell; and established a program to bring music to New York City correctional facilities, including Rikers Island. Recent highlights with The Chelsea Symphony and at Brown include an Earth Day concert at the American Museum of Natural History featuring Become Ocean by Pulitzer Prize winner John Luther Adams, performances of John Corigliano’s Symphony No. 1 in commemoration of Stonewall 50—WorldPride NYC, and collaborations with violinist Itzhak Perlman, clarinetist Anthony McGill, and the Martha Graham Dance Company.
Seto holds a BA in Music from Yale University and an MA, MPhil, and PhD in Historical Musicology from Columbia University. He studied at the Pierre Monteux School for Conductors in Maine, where he served as an assistant to music director Michael Jinbo for two seasons. His conducting teachers include Lawrence Leighton Smith and Shinik Hahm, and he has participated in workshops with Kenneth Kiesler, Daniel Lewis, Donald Portnoy, Donald Thulean, and Paul Vermel. He is a recipient of the Yale Friends of Music Prize and has been honored with an ASCAP Morton Gould award.
The origins of the Brown University Orchestra date back at least to 1858, the year a “Grand Concert…accompanied by the Orchestra of Brown University” took place in Seekonk, Massachusetts. The modern era of the BUO began in the winter of 1919, when the College Orchestra was established. Renamed the Brown-Pembroke Orchestra in 1940, it became the Brown University Orchestra in 1953. The orchestra’s current membership consists of approximately 100 student musicians from Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design. The BUO has given concerts at Carnegie Hall and Lincoln Center, toured China and Ireland, and performed with such renowned soloists as Itzhak Perlman, Navah Perlman ’92, Mstislav Rostropovich, Isaac Stern, Christopher O’Riley, Eugenia Zukerman, Pinchas Zukerman, Dave Brubeck, Jennifer Koh, and Anthony McGill. In 2006 Daniel Barenboim conducted the BUO during the first of his two residencies with the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra. The BUO has hosted Samuel Adler, Lukas Foss, Steve Reich, Steven Stucky, Joseph Schwantner, Michael Torke, Peter Boyer, Nico Muhly, Joan Tower, John Harbison, Vijay Iyer, Gabriela Ortiz, and other distinguished composers-in-residence, and won 7 ASCAP Awards for Adventurous Programming of Contemporary Music. BUO alumni include current and former members of the Cleveland Orchestra, New World Symphony, Nashville Symphony, North Carolina Symphony, Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra and Opera, Spoleto Festival Orchestra, New York Philharmonic, and Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
The Brown University Orchestra sponsors its annual concerto competition each fall semester to give its most highly talents members the opportunity to perform as soloists with the orchestra. This privilege is also extended to musicians at Brown whose specialties do not generally allow membership in an orchestra: pianists, vocalists, and players of guitar, saxophone, and other non-orchestra instruments. Contact the BUO if you have questions about the Competition.
Brown University Orchestra Sunday, March 1, 2020, in Sayles Hall of Brown University, Providence, RI. Ludwig van Beethoven: Leonore Overture No. 3
Brown University Orchestra performs Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Op. 35
