TBA

PRINCETON UNIVERSITY ORCHESTRA

The Princeton University Orchestra was born in February 1896, with a concert by professional musicians. The modern history of PUO begins with the appointment of the orchestra’s present music director, Michael J. Pratt, in 1977. Through the fifties and sixties, the ensemble shrank down to as few as thirty students amid “music-is-better-seen-than-heard” mentalities in music academia, as well as insufficient rehearsal and performance spaces on campus. Following Pratt’s appointment to the orchestra’s podium, this downward trend quickly reversed itself into an upwards explosion. In 1984, the orchestra’s home, Alexander Hall, was renovated from a large auditorium into a professional-grade concert hall. Additionally, unprecedented interest in music performance among students, coupled with growth in the overall undergraduate class size and the development of Princeton’s dedicated extracurricular hours (two hours every weekday during which classes are forbidden from meeting), allowed PUO to quickly expand into the large symphonic orchestra of over 100 students that it remains today.

In response to students in the orchestra expressing a desire to continue as musicians after their studies at Princeton, Michael Pratt established the Music Department’s Certificate Program in Music Performance in 1990, and he was a major architect in the general integration of performance into Princeton’s wider curriculum. Undergraduate musicians in the Music Performance certificate receive complementary lessons and are eligible to spend a semester abroad studying at the Royal College of Music, which has been named one of the top music conservatories in the world. Following the creation of a strong music performance program, the conductor noted a significant upswing in Princeton University applicants with exceptional musical talent and interest, which in turn allowed the Princeton University Orchestra to grow into an even stronger ensemble, able to tackle any piece in the classical repertoire. In 2018, there were enough applicants to the incoming class alone to fill multiple large symphonic orchestras.

Nowadays, the orchestra is recognized for its musical excellence, named in an independent survey as one of the top then college-age orchestras in the United States.

MICHAEL PRATT

The 2023-2024 season marks 46 years since Michael Pratt came to Princeton to conduct the Princeton University Orchestra— a relationship that has resulted in the ensemble’s reputation as one of the finest university orchestras in the United States. He is credited by his colleagues and generations of students in being the architect of one of the premiere music programs in the country, Princeton’s certificate Program in Music Performance (now the Music Minor in Performance), Pratt has served as its director since its inception in 1991. The international reputation the Program has earned has resulted in Princeton’s becoming a major destination for talented and academically gifted students. Pratt also established a partnership between Princeton and the Royal College of Music that every year sends Princeton students to study in London. He is also co-founder of the Richardson Chamber Players, which affords opportunities for tops students to perform with the performance faculty in chamber music concerts.

Over the years, Pratt has guided many generations of Princeton students through a remarkable variety of orchestral and operatic literature, from early Baroque Italian opera through symphonies of Mahler to the latest compositions by students and faculty. He has led the Princeton University Orchestra on eleven European tours. Under Pratt the PU Orchestra has also participated in major campus collaborations with the Theater and Dance programs in such works as the premieres of Prokofiev’s Le Pas d’Acier and Boris Godunov, a revival of Richard Strauss’s setting of the Molière classic, Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme, and a full production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, with all of Mendelssohn’s incidental music.

Pratt was educated at the Eastman School of Music and Tanglewood, and his teachers and mentors have included Gunther Schuller, Leonard Bernstein, Gustav Meier, and Otto Werner Mueller.

In March 2018 Michael Pratt was awarded an honorary membership to the Royal College of Music, London (HonRCM) by HRH The Prince of Wales. At Princeton’s Commencement 2019 he was awarded the President’s Award for Distinguished Teaching by President Christopher Eisgruber.