The Brookline Symphony Orchestra will begin its 2024-25 season on Saturday, with performances between October and June that include a collaboration with a prominent local chorus and the winners of a concerto competition.
The orchestra, which started in the 1950s but went on hiatus in 2001 before being revived in 2010, is celebrating its 15th anniversary since the revival. Andrew Altenbach, the orchestra’s music director, is entering his eighth season.
The anniversary comes with a new venue: This year, the orchestra will move its concerts from All Saints Parish to the Michael Driscoll School for increased audience capacity and better acoustics.
“Players were struggling to hear each other, and we were starting to have an audience that was having a hard time fitting in the space,” Altenbach said. Driscoll School’s auditorium seats about 350 people, whereas All Saints Parish only sat about 240.
Another new addition this year will be Jean Huang as concertmaster, a position held by the top violinist and essentially a second in command to Altenbach. Huang is a Taiwanese violinist who also leads the Cape Cod Chamber Orchestra as its concertmaster. Although the Brookline Symphony Orchestra is largely made up of local volunteer musicians — including Altenbach, who’s a financial planner by day — there are a few pros too.
“Jean is truly fantastic and the impact of her presence has been immediate,” Altenbach said. “She has terrific technique, of course, but she is a good leader because she brings out the best in everyone: she makes suggestions for changes that are going to make the whole section sound the best.”
Huang will be featured in the Oct. 19 season opener on Ralph Vaughan Williams’ “The Lark Ascending.” Cellist Johnny Mok will also be featured during the season opener, on Ernest Bloch’s “Schelomo.” In the Brookline Symphony Orchestra’s annual Bouix Concerto Competition, which names a winner from within the orchestra as well as a community winner from outside the orchestra, Mok was the community winner.
“It’s a very deep and thought-provoking piece with a lot of intensity, where the music ranges in mood from gigantic outbursts of defiance to very soft, prayerful, contemplative moments,” Altenbach said.
The performance will also include Samuel Coleridge-Taylor’s “Ballade” and Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”
“I wanted to do ‘The Lark Ascending,’ which has a bit of a folk song quality to it, and I paired it with the Copland piece because it also has a folk song nature to it,” Altenbach said.
When putting together the season, Altenbach starts with his personal wishlist — “pieces I’ve always wanted to do or would like to do again” — and considers player preferences as well.
Winners of the annual Bouix Concerto Competition always get features, so those have to be slotted in, and Altenbach intentionally pairs pieces together that require more orchestra members, to make for more efficient rehearsals.
“I always feel like I’m moving chess pieces around,” Altenbach said.
From there, he’s able to turn to stylistic questions, which might lead to combining composers from similar nationalities or pursuing some kind of cohesive sound, like with “The Lark Ascending” and “Appalachian Spring” in the season opener.
Rest of season features collaborations and Pops
The orchestra’s second performance (“Fauré, Jongen, and Beethoven”), scheduled for Dec. 14, includes pieces from French, German, and Belgian composers: Gabriel Fauré’s “Masques et Bergamasques et Pavane,” Joseph Jongen’s “Suite for Viola and Orchestra,” which will feature violist and Bouix Concerto Competition orchestra winner Bryan Tyler, and Ludwig van Beethoven’s “Symphony No. 8.”
The season resumes in March Johannes Brahms’ “German Requiem” as part of a two-year collaboration with the Metropolitan Chorale, a Boston-area 100-voice chorus directed by Lisa Graham.
“We’ve collaborated before, but in the past, we’ve shared the podium, which is fun but can also be logistically taxing,” Altenbach said. He’ll take the podium this year, after Graham led last year’s joint performance.
The fourth performance on May 17, “Prokofiev, Mazzoli, and Fibich,” combines lesser known “Symphony No. 2” by Zdenêk Fibich and “Orpheus Undone” by Missy Mazzoli with Sergei Prokofiev’s more familiar “Lieutenant Kijé.”
It’s also important to Altenbach to include pieces from underrepresented communities. Every year, he opens the season with either a composer of color or a woman composer. This year, that’s Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, who was a biracial British composer and conductor.
The season wraps up on June 15 with the final Summer Pops Concert, which was added to the program for the first time last year.
“When you have the number one pops orchestra in the country down the street, it can be easier to wonder, should we be doing pops? But we had a packed house for it last year and it was nice for the orchestra players to change it up a bit,” Altenbach said.
The orchestra also plays outreach concerts in senior centers and other community spaces, such as the Brookline Public Library, which will host the Brookline Symphony Chamber Players on Oct. 28.
In general, it seeks to be accessible to all; it’s part of the Mass Cultural Council’s Card to Culture program, which offers $5 tickets for EBT, WIC, and ConnectorCare cardholders, and it has discounts for seniors and students with free admission for children 12 and under.
“Any strong community has a wide variety of offerings — good education, good entertainment, good culture, good sports — for people to experience and enjoy,” Altenbach said. “This is an excellent orchestra, performing good repertoire, who are actually members of our community. That’s a beautiful thing, and I encourage people to come to the concert and to tell other people in our community about us.”