NASHVILLE SYMPHONY ASSOCIATION
1 Symphony Place, Nashville, TN 37201 nashvillesymphony.org

---

Organizations Filed Purposes: The Nashville Symphony inspires, entertains, educates and serves through musical performance, innovation, collaboration, and inclusion. Vision: As Middle Tennessee continues to grow and transform, the Nashville Symphony will be a financially robust, world-class orchestra fully supported and embraced by the community it serves. Key to achieving this vision, the Nashville Symphony will: * Become the leading orchestra for the performance, recording and commissioning of contemporary American Music. * Transform into an equitable and inclusive institution that is representative of the diverse community it serves. * Deliver visionary artistic and educational programming that excites the public, drives institutional growth and contributes to the growth of the art form.

The Nashville Symphony inspires, entertains, educates and serves through musical performance, innovation, collaboration, and inclusion.

Artistic Programming : Curated by Maestro Giancarlo Guerrero, the Nashville Symphony's Classical Series is the cornerstone of the orchestra's programming. Until it was cut short by the pandemic in March 2020, the series featured a mix of beloved classical repertoire and contemporary American works. Of note, concertmaster Jun Iwasaki took a virtuoso turn at the front of the stage to perform Bartok's Rhapsodies No. 1 & No. 2 with guest conductor Lawrence Foster, and "Beethoven's Birthday Bash" began a year of planned concerts celebrating the 250th anniversary of Beethoven's birth and his musical legacy. Led by Chorus Director Tucker Biddlecombe, the Nashville Symphony Chorus joined the orchestra to perform Rachmaninoff's The Bells and Vaughan Williams' Serenade to Music, which featured 13 Chorus members as soloists. The Nashville Symphony regularly welcomes composers to Nashville to participate in the rehearsals and performances of their works. This season featured two notable highlights. Adolphus Hailstork, who got one of his first professional opportunities half a century earlier thanks to then-Nashville Symphony Music Director Thor Johnson, returned to town for a performance of An American Port of Call in the opening concerts of the Classical Series. One of the most widely celebrated composers working today, Jennifer Higdon, came to Nashville for the recording of her Low Brass Concerto, which featured Nashville Symphony trombonists Paul Jenkins, Derek Hawkes, and Steven Brown, plus tubist Gilbert Long. The Nashville Symphony remains one of the most active recording orchestras in the U.S., and the season included a number of projects - some just started and others completed. In addition to Higdon's Low Brass Concerto, these included John Adams' My Father Knew Charles Ives and Horatio Parker's Organ Concerto. Three Nashville Symphony recordings were released to the public on the internationally distributed Naxos label: Aaron Jay Kernis' Symphony No. 4 "Chromelodeon," Christopher Rouse's Symphony No. 5 (which was nominated for a 2021 GRAMMY Award in the Best Contemporary Classical Composition category), and Tobias Picker's The Encantadas. The Nashville Symphony's innovative Composer Lab program, led by Giancarlo Guerrero and composer Aaron Jay Kernis, welcomed five outstanding young composers for an intensive week of activities during which they were able to develop their talents, gain hands-on experience working with the Nashville Symphony, and showcase their work for a live audience. Featured composers included Jack Frerer, Jared Miller, Brian Raphael Nabors, Niloufar Nourbakhsh and SiHyun Uhm. In addition to its classical programming, the Nashville Symphony offers a wide variety of concerts for the Middle Tennessee community, including pop, jazz, family events and movies with live orchestra. Of special note, the Nashville Symphony hosted local organizations including Casa de la Cultura to present Mexico en el Corazon, a free mariachi celebration at Schermerhorn Symphony Center. As COVID-19 spread across the U.S. in March 2020, venues hosting concerts, sporting events and other gatherings were among the first businesses to suspend activity. This sudden halt led to the cancellation or postponement of 60 concerts at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center through Summer 2021. Performing and presenting concerts is the lifeblood of our institution, generating two-thirds of our annual operating revenue. The impact on our institution was immediate and dramatic. When the pandemic forced the suspension of public concert activity, our musicians weren't ready to put down their instruments. Instead, they got busy developing virtual content from their homes. Audiences got to see a whole new side of our orchestra, as trombonist Paul Jenkins and his wife Anna Spina performed a trombone duet for their infant son, composer-violist Chris Farrell performed a duet with bassoonist Julia Harguindey, clarinetist Katherine Kohler featured her puppy Tilly in a performance of Strauss' Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks, and much more. In addition to these solo and duo performances, the Musicians of the Nashville Symphony collaborated on a performance of the fifth movement from Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. Maestro Guerrero, our Accelerando students, and members of the Nashville community all joined in for a performance of Accelerando Coordinator Bryson Finney's "We Are Nashville," which would go on to win a Midsouth Regional Emmy Award. During this time, the Nashville Symphony Chorus continued rehearsing virtually, and director Tucker Biddlecombe created a virtual choir project with 100 recorded submissions from chorus members.

Education & Community Engagement Programs: The Nashville Symphony proudly serves thousands of children and families each year from the 41-county Middle Tennessee region, both at Schermerhorn Symphony Center and in local schools and community gathering spaces across the region. The Symphony works to offer integrated support across a number of programs for children with autism and/or other sensory sensitivities, including flexible and accessible seating, closed captioning, quiet spaces, trained staff and additional resources. 20,996 students and community members participated in Education & Community Engagement programs during the 2019/20 season. Our impact and reach were affected dramatically by the suspension of programming due to the pandemic. In spite of this disruption, the Nashville Symphony's education programs were able to make a difference in the lives of local students and educators. Ensembles in the Schools engaged more than 3,000 students and completed the first year of residency programs in five elementary schools. Ten Young People's Concerts were attended by 85 school groups and engaged over 11,000 students. Sensory-friendly materials were available for more than 60 performances. The Nashville Symphony's Accelerando initiative prepares gifted young students of diverse ethnic backgrounds to pursue music at the collegiate level and beyond. In 2019/20, the program welcomed six new students, bringing the number of students in the program to 19. The seniors auditioned for college music programs and were awarded a combined $261,000 in college scholarship funding, and one student was awarded From The Top's Jack Kent Cooke Young Artists Award and received $15,000 toward a new instrument. Free community performances reached more than 4,000 people in the 2019/20 season. Concerts included full-orchestra engagements at Plaza Mariachi and The Renaissance Center in Dickson. Free performances at the Schermerhorn Symphony Center included our annual Let Freedom Sing celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the civil rights movement.

---

---

Data for this page was sourced from XML published by IRS (public 990 form dataset) from: https://s3.amazonaws.com/irs-form-990/202111379349304041_public.xml