The Detroit Symphony Orchestra (DSO) is an American orchestra based in Detroit, Michigan. Its primary performance venue is Orchestra Hall at the Max M. Fisher Music Center in Detroit's Midtown neighborhood. Jader Bignamini is the current music director of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, with Na'Zir McFadden as assistant conductor. Leonard Slatkin, the previous music director, is the orchestra's current music director laureate. Neeme Järvi, music director from 1990 to 2005, is the orchestra's current music director emeritus.
History
Founding and growth
The DSO performed the first concert of its first subscription season at 8:00 p.m. on Monday, Dec. 19, 1887 at the Detroit Opera House. The conductor was Rudolph Speil. He was succeeded in subsequent seasons by a variety of conductors until 1900 when Hugo Kalsow was appointed and served until the orchestra ceased operations in 1910. The Detroit Symphony resumed operations in 1914 when ten Detroit society women each contributed $100 to the organization and pledged to find 100 additional subscribers. They soon hired a music director, Weston Gales, a 27-year-old church organist from Boston, who led the first performance of the reconstituted orchestra on February 26, 1914, again at the old Detroit Opera House.
The appointment of the Russian pianist Ossip Gabrilowitsch as music director in 1918 brought instant status to the new orchestra. A friend of composers Gustav Mahler and Sergei Rachmaninoff, Gabrilowitsch demanded that a new auditorium be built as a condition of his accepting the position. Orchestra Hall was constructed in 1919 in four months and twenty-three days. Under Gabrilowitsch, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra quickly became one of the most prominent orchestras in the country, performing with the leading artists of the day. In 1922, the orchestra gave the world's first radio broadcast of a symphony orchestra concert with Gabrilowitsch conducting and guest artist Artur Schnabel at the piano. Gabrilowitsch was music director until his death in 1936. From 1934 to 1942, the orchestra performed for millions across the country as the official orchestra of The Ford Sunday Evening Hour (later the Ford Symphony Hour) national radio show.
In 1939, three years after Gabrilowitsch's death, the orchestra moved from Orchestra Hall to the Masonic Temple Theatre due to major financial problems caused by the Great Depression. In the 1940s, the orchestra disbanded twice and moved to three different performing venues. In 1946, the orchestra moved to the Wilson Theater which was renamed Music Hall. In 1956, the orchestra moved to Ford Auditorium on the waterfront of the Detroit River, where it remained for the next 33 years. The orchestra once again enjoyed national prestige under music director Paul Paray, winning numerous awards for its 70 recordings on the Mercury label. Paray was followed by noted music directors Sixten Ehrling, Aldo Ceccato, Antal Doráti, and Günther Herbig.
In popular music, members of the orchestra provided the recorded string accompaniments on many of Motown Records's classic hits of the 1960s, usually under the direction of the orchestra's concertmaster of the time, Gordon Staples. Two Motown albums featured the strings with the Motown rhythm section the Funk Brothers. The combined ensemble was known as the San Remo Golden Strings and enjoyed two hit singles: "Hungry for Love" (#3 Billboard Adult Contemporary) and "I'm Satisfied" (#89 U.S. Pop). In 1966, members of the orchestra were seen recording in the Motown studio on West Grand Boulevard with The Supremes for the ABC TV documentary "Anatomy of Pop: The Music Explosion". The song they perform is the hit "My World Is Empty Without You" by Holland, Dozier, and Holland. There were two full albums released by the group: "Hungry for Love" (1967) and "Swing" (1968) both on the Gordy label (a subsidiary of Motown).
In 1970, the DSO instituted the Detroit Symphony Youth Orchestra as a training group, under Paul Freeman.
The Neeme Järvi era
In 1989, following a 20-year rescue and restoration effort, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra returned to Orchestra Hall. Further renovations to the hall were completed in 2003, including a $60 million addition and a recital hall and education wing, the Max M. Fisher Music Center. A fine arts high school, the Detroit School of Arts, was added to the DSO campus in 2004.