American National Orchestra

American National Orchestra is a community of professional musicians and composers committed to creating and performing a national repertoire of orchestral music that is meaningful to the spirit of the American people, built upon existing populist styles of music, reflective of our diversity and accessible to all while maintaining the highest artistic standards.

Description:
ANO will be structured as a professional orchestra which commissions and performs new works following the flexible guidelines of its directorship, and publishes these works with the intent of making them available for a reasonable cost to other orchestras. The staffing will consist three directors (Executive Director, Director of Production, Artistic Director) and a small team of administrators (Marketing/Outreach, Controller/ Fundraising, Technical Director, Personnel/Librarian, IT), some of whom may be contract workers. The orchestra itself will number approximately 55 contract union musicians.

We are seeking board members with proven performance in the business sector as well as sufficient nonprofit background to assist us in achieving our goal of building and sustaining this orchestra, who share our enthusiasm for our mission, who celebrate the diversity of American music, and who are able to leverage the power of their proven leadership skills for the benefit of our organization.

The unpaid Board of Directors consists of President, Secretary, and Treasurer. Our preliminary budget, currently unfunded, indicates an annual working budget of approximately 250K to start. Our bylaws indicate terms for the board of 3 years. The meetings will initially be fairly frequent – likely bi-weekly – then monthly once we’re established, with reimbursement for reasonable out of pocket expenditures.

History:
For the years we’ve been involved in orchestral music, we’ve been aware that the experience of classical music could be more fulfilling on both sides of the podium. We identified our feelings as a strong desire to have a repertoire of symphonic music that really reflects who we are as Americans and is meaningful to our people on a deep and universal level. Examining the situation exhaustively, American National Orchestra grew out of the need to address the following issues: 1) Orchestras are going out of business at an alarming rate; support is graying or dying out; new orchestras are struggling because there is not sufficient audience. 2) Orchestral music today fits largely into several categories: music that is old and Eurocentric, music that is new but inaccessible, and music that is accessible but frequently shallow. 3) Lack of Access is a primary issue in orchestral music. Access can refer to the ability of audiences and musicians to grasp and enjoy what is being performed. It can also refer to the ability of amateur or community groups to purchase and perform new music. Lastly, it can refer to the presence of orchestral music in all forms of media to reach the maximum demographic, affordable and meaningful. Our intent is to address all of these issues in the firm belief that we can be a positive force in revitalizing interest in orchestral music by creating a new repertoire of uniquely American symphonic music and making it easily available to all.

Contact people:

Lucinda Ellert, Artistic Director, (phone), (email) Judy Braude, Director Of Productions, (phone), (email)

Address:

31 Longwood Rd. Reading, MA 01867 (See a map)

Web Site: http://americannationalorchestra.org

Directions:

Meeting place for board to be determined. For maps or information, please see http://www.mbta.com

Last updated on August 10, 2009