Orchestra of St. Luke's
Encyclopedia
The Orchestra of St. Luke's is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 chamber orchestra
Orchestra
An orchestra is a sizable instrumental ensemble that contains sections of string, brass, woodwind, and percussion instruments. The term orchestra derives from the Greek ορχήστρα, the name for the area in front of an ancient Greek stage reserved for the Greek chorus...

 based in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

.

It was founded in the summer of 1979 at the Caramoor International Music Festival in Katonah, New York
Katonah, New York
Katonah, New York is one of three unincorporated hamlets within the town of Bedford, Westchester County, New York, United States.-History:Katonah is named for Chief Katonah, an American Indian from whom the land of Bedford was purchased by a group of English colonists...

.

The orchestra has an average of 55 musicians. Its Principal Conductor from 2001 to 2007 was Donald Runnicles
Donald Runnicles
Donald Runnicles is a Scottish conductor who has worked extensively in other countries, particularly Germany and the USA....

. Previous conductors include Charles Mackerras
Charles Mackerras
Sir Alan Charles Maclaurin Mackerras, AC, CH, CBE was an Australian conductor. He was an authority on the operas of Janáček and Mozart, and the comic operas of Gilbert and Sullivan...

 (1998-2001), and Roger Norrington
Roger Norrington
Sir Roger Arthur Carver Norrington, CBE is a British conductor. He is the son of Sir Arthur Norrington and his brother is Humphrey Thomas Norrington....

 (1990-1994).

The Orchestra of St. Luke's has premiered over 100 orchestral and chamber works by such composers as John Adams
John Coolidge Adams
John Coolidge Adams is a Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer with strong roots in minimalism. His best-known works include Short Ride in a Fast Machine , On the Transmigration of Souls , a choral piece commemorating the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks , and Shaker...

, Joan Tower
Joan Tower
Joan Tower is a Grammy-winning contemporary American composer, concert pianist and conductor. Lauded by the New Yorker as "one of the most successful woman composers of all time", her bold and energetic compositions have been performed in concert halls around the world...

, Anthony Davis
Anthony Davis (composer)
Anthony Davis, better known as Tony Davis , is an American composer, jazz pianist, and student of gamelan music.-Biography:...

, Nicholas Maw
Nicholas Maw
John Nicholas Maw was a British composer.-Biography:Born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, Maw was the son of Clarence Frederick Maw and Hilda Ellen Chambers. He attended the Wennington School, a boarding school, in Wetherby in the West Riding of Yorkshire. His mother died of tuberculosis when he was 14...

, Andre Previn
André Previn
André George Previn, KBE is an American pianist, conductor, and composer. He is considered one of the most versatile musicians in the world, and is the winner of four Academy Awards for his film work and ten Grammy Awards for his recordings. -Early Life:Previn was born in...

, George Tsontakis
George Tsontakis
George Tsontakis is an American composer and conductor.Tsontakis studied composition with Hugo Weisgall and Roger Sessions at the Juilliard School from 1974 to 1978, and later with Franco Donatoni at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome...

, and Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, and has released over 70 recordings, three of which have won Grammy Award
Grammy Award
A Grammy Award — or Grammy — is an accolade by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences of the United States to recognize outstanding achievement in the music industry...

s: John Adams's Nixon in China
Nixon in China (opera)
Nixon in China is an opera in three acts by John Adams, with a libretto by Alice Goodman. Adams' first opera, it was inspired by the 1972 visit to China by US President Richard Nixon. The work premiered at the Houston Grand Opera on October 22, 1987, in a production by Peter Sellars with...

, Samuel Barber
Samuel Barber
Samuel Osborne Barber II was an American composer of orchestral, opera, choral, and piano music. His Adagio for Strings is his most popular composition and widely considered a masterpiece of modern classical music...

's Knoxville: Summer of 1915, and Bel Canto with Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming
Renée Fleming is an American soprano specializing in opera and lieder. Fleming has a full lyric soprano voice.Fleming has performed coloratura, lyric, and lighter spinto soprano repertoires. She has sung roles in Italian, German, French, Czech, and Russian, aside from her native English. She also...

. In 2003 the orchestra launched its own record label, St. Luke's Collection.

The affiliated St. Luke's Chamber Ensemble, founded in 1974, is among New York's most prominent classical chamber ensembles. It draws its name from Church of St. Luke in the Fields, Greenwich Village, in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...

, where the 20-member ensemble first performed.

In 2005, it was among 406 New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 arts and social service institutions to receive part of a $20 million grant from the Carnegie Corporation, which was made possible through a donation by New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg
Michael Bloomberg
Michael Rubens Bloomberg is the current Mayor of New York City. With a net worth of $19.5 billion in 2011, he is also the 12th-richest person in the United States...

. http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/06/nyregion/06donate.html?ex=1278302400&en=93a1beabd4ede5b8&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss http://carnegie.org/sub/news/anon2005.html

Its current President & Executive Director is Katy Clark, and its current Chairman is Norman S. Benzaquen.
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