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 Founded in 1990 by Music Director Paul Gambill, Orchestra Nashville has become recognized as one of America’s premiere orchestras. Paul Gambill's imaginative style of Music Without Boundaries programming has led to recordings for Warner Brothers, Albany, Angel, Almanac, Compass and Alabaster Records, and a steady stream of national media.
Orchestra Nashville specializes in commissioning works that cross musical boundaries by integrating the performance practices of Western orchestra music with jazz, American folk and fiddle traditions, and world music. By presenting these new works alongside masterpieces from the traditional repertoire, Orchestra Nashville is challenging audience’s perception of what an orchestra can be, while creating a new kind of orchestra music relevant to today’s culture.
Since beginning its commissioning program in 1996, Orchestra Nashville has commissioned and premiered 36 works by American composers. Composer residencies have included Conni Ellisor (1998-2002), J. Mark Scearce (2002-2005), and a Music Alive Extended Residency with David Balakrishnan (2005-2008) through support from the American Symphony Orchestra League and Meet The Composer.
Orchestra Nashville was founded to bring together the freelance musicians of Nashville’s legendary studio recording scene. Their artistic excellence and stylistic range has led to collaborations with a diverse group of artists, including: national tours in 2003 and 2004 as part of the Amy Grant & Vince Gill Simply Christmas Tour, which took Orchestra Nashville to nearly 200,000 people in 34 cities across the country; performing for an audience of over 90,000 with Trey Anastasio at the 2004 Bannaroo Music & Arts Festival; Sharon Isbin; Turtle Island String Quartet; John Jorgenson; and sold out concerts with Martina McBride and Alison Krauss at Nashville’s Historic Ryman Auditorium and Grand Ole Opry House.
Orchestra Nashville has also received critical acclaim for its interactive education programs. These programs have served thousands of children in communities throughout Middle Tennessee. During the 2002-03 season, Orchestra Nashville’s Kid Pan Alley songwriting project, in partnership with KPA Artistic Director Paul Reisler, served 2nd & 3rd graders in the Nashville Metro Schools. The resulting CD, Kid Pan Alley-Nashville, received a Grammy nomination and the Parent’s Choice Gold Award for excellence in children’s music. And the NCO’s ENCORE Project, which served young adults working toward their high school equivalency degree (GED) was featured at the National Family Literacy conference as a model for integrating music into the family literacy classroom.
In 2006, Orchestra Nashville began a collaboration with Belmont University that is serving to develop recording projects with the Curb College of Entertainment and Music Business and Belmont's Youth Honors Orchestra and the Strings Crossings Camp for young string players.
Orchestra Nashville’s debut CD, Conversations In Silence, was released on Warner Brothers Records in 1997. Their 2007 recording of the Thomson Cello Concerto with soloist Emmanuel Feldman was acclaimed as "an excellent new recording" by The New York Times. Other recording projects have included works of Aaron Copland (Naxos), Harvest Home Suite, for solo fiddle and guitar (Angel), Creston Concertino for Marimba (Alabaster), the Grammy-nomated children's album Kid Pan Alley-Nashville, and Rider On the Plains.
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