The American Symphony Orchestra is an ensemble based in New York that is dedicated to making symphonic music accessible to all audiences. Founded in by Leopold Stokowski in 1962, the orchestra has a residency at the Richard B. Fisher Center for Performing Arts at Bard College and performs regularly at the Symphony Space as well as the legendary Carnegie hall in New York City. Since 1991, Music Director Leon Botstein has conceptualized concerts around themes drawn from literature, politics, visual art, history and visual arts and has come to be known for choosing underrated masterpieces that are rarely performed by contemporary orchestras in an attempt to preserve the diverse classical repertoire. The American Symphony Orchestra became the resident orchestra for the Collegiate Chorale and founded the award-winning music education program Music Notes, which fuses symphonic music into high school humanities classes.
