The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra was founded during the winter of 1969–1970 by Geoffrey Simon, a graduate student from Melbourne, Australia, who came to study conducting at the Indiana University School of Music in fall 1969.

Concerned about the lack of performance opportunities for the people of Bloomington, Simon requested permission from the dean of the School of Music, Wilfred Bain, to form a community symphony orchestra. Simon envisioned an orchestra open to all serious musicians regardless of their vocations, and it has remained that way since then.

Simon recruited players from Bloomington and surrounding areas, and today the musicians comprising the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra come from Carmel, Martinsville, Nashville, Bedford, and Columbus as well as from the Bloomington area. Two musicians who answered the original call and played in the opening concert on May 7, 1970, have remained with the orchestra through the years: violist David McIntosh and bassist Edwin Greenebaum.

The first public concert was performed at the Binford Junior High School with a complement of 56 musicians. The program consisted of Nikolai’s overture to The Merry Wives of Windsor, Prokofiev’s Peter and the Wolf (with narration by David McIntosh) and Saint-Saens’s Concerto in A Minor for Cello and Orchestra with soloist Christoph Henkel, a student of Janos Starker. The concert concluded with Haydn’s Symphony No. 101 in D.

On the occasion of the orchestra’s first birthday concert on March 2, 1971, the Herald-Telephone reviewer Ron Reinoehl said, “In the year since Simon founded the orchestra by printing signs asking people to join, the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra has come a long way. It represents an important achievement for all concerned … through their efforts Bloomington’s cultural atmosphere has become more invigorating, with a healthy infusion from the community itself, rather than through something superimposed from the outside.” Reinoehl’s comments are still appropriate today.

The orchestra presented three concerts during its first season, one of which was a concert for children. It has performed a free concert for children every season since.

The second season expanded to four concerts, and orchestra personnel grew to approximately 60 players. At the close of the 1971–72 season, Geoffrey Simon completed his studies at the School of Music and left for further conducting studies in Europe.

In the 53 years since its founding, the BSO has grown to 85 musicians and has been led by 13 different artistic directors. During the 2019–2020 season, the orchestra will perform 10 concerts at five different venues.

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