2023-24 Concert Season Announcement

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra is thrilled to announce its 61st concert season. Please check the individual pages to learn more about each concert.

Past, Present, and Future

Favorites: Yours, Mine, and Ours

Celebrating the Americas!

Out of this World!

Music Director Manny Laureano has put together a season featuring American composers on each program along with outstanding soloists, and audience and musician favorites. Purchase your tickets today to guarantee the best seats in the house, and share this news with your networks.

We look forward to sharing this season of music with you!

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Music in 3D: #8 :: Concert Preview No. 1

Before each concert, we share “Manny’s Musings,” thoughts from our Music Director and Conductor, Manny Laureano. This is the first entry of the “Musings” for the “Music in 3D: #8” concert that will be performed on Sunday, May 1, 2022.

Paul-Abraham Dukas (1865-1935) was one of France’s pre-eminent Jewish composers but his music did not really reflect the folk aspects of that culture, unlike Gustav Mahler, who was alive at the same time. His music was, instead, exemplary of the new traditions that the impending Impressionist would bring. In fact, he would eventually attend the Conservatoire in Paris and find himself studying and honing his skills alongside a young Claude Debussy and the two were friends until Debussy passed into musical immortality in 1918.

In addition to becoming a composer and orchestrator he became a respected music critic (one does have to make money, after all). His musical output was not as massive as so many other composers of note but he did manage to make the most of what he wrote. There are few music-lovers who could not sing the famous bassoon melody from his best-known work, L’Aprenti Sorcier, with a few bup-de-buppity-bups. 

The Fanfare to La Peri is a bit of an afterthought that comes from suggestions that the abrupt, original opening to his short ballet needed something to prepare the palate. So, after preparing the main course, this chef pairs it with a short but brilliant work for an orchestral brass section. In three parts, he accomplishes what he sets out to do with bursts of chords, triple-tonguing, and a shimmering nod to the Impressionist period of 1912. It gives way to a cloudy texture of close harmony that does exactly what Impressionism in France was famous for. That is, suggestion rather than outright clarity. Not to worry, as the opening statement is reprised with an anthem-like ferocity leaving the listener to want to stand and, with a wave of your chapeau, yell “Vive le France!”

Join Music Director & Conductor Manny Laureano, for the concert, “Music in 3D: #8” featuring soloists Clare Longendyke, piano, and Yu Chia Hsu, violin. The concert takes place on Sunday, May 1, 2022 at 3 p.m., at the Gideon S. Ives Auditorium at the Masonic Heritage Center (11411 Masonic Home Drive, Bloomington)

To learn more about the concert, click here. You can order tickets online through the Masonic Heritage Center Box Office, or by calling 952-948-6506.

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Tickets on Sale Now!

The BSO looks forward to performing with soloists Clare Longendyke and Yu Chia Hsu for our season-ending concert, Music in 3D: #8, on Sunday May 1. Tickets are on sale now – Order today to assure your chance to hear these outstanding soloists and the BSO’s highly anticipated performance of Brahms’ Symphony No. 4.

Clare Longendyke, Piano
A black and white photo of a young Asian man holding a violin
Yu Chia Hsu, violin
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November Program Sneak Peek

We are happy to provide this preview of the Bloomington Symphony’s November 21 concert program. Please read, and then purchase your tickets here and plan to join us for the performance of these two pieces – one brand new to the orchestra and our audience, the other familiar and beloved. Don’t miss your chance to hear these great works performed live, by the 75 volunteer musicians of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra led by Manny Laureano, Music Director and Conductor.

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Tickets on sale for 2021 concerts

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra performs at the Masonic Heritage Center, under the baton of Manny Laureano
The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra with Manny Laureano, Music Director onstage at the Minnesota Masonic Heritage Center (Photo by Leslie Plesser)

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra is looking forward to returning to stage this fall.

The first concert, Celebrations! will be on Sunday, October 3. Featuring Rebecca Jyrkas, the BSO’s principal horn playing Richard Strauss’ Horn Concerto No. 1, and Stravinsky’s Firebird Suite (1919), along with violinist Vladimir Tsiper, the concert will be a triumphant and celebratory return to the concert stage.

The BSO will return to the Masonic Heritage Center stage on Sunday, November 21, for The Storyteller and the Poet. Opening with William Dawson’s Negro Folk Symphony, this gorgeously orchestrated piece was written by an African American composer who we are proud to introduce to our Bloomington audience in what we believe to be the Twin Cities premiere of this piece. The concert will conclude with BSO Concertmaster Michael Sutton performing the beloved Violin Concerto by Ludwig van Beethoven.

Tickets are on sale now.

October concert

November concert

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BSO Board Announces Matching Challenge

The Board of Directors of the Bloomington Symphony Orchestra is thrilled to announce a match of $5,450 for donations made between now and the end of November. Your donations help us to be able to perform in fine venues in the City of Bloomington, to offer free concert tickets to any student who comes with an ID, to introduce new gems, like the Charlie Harmon “Suite from Candide,” and to be able to do all of this at a high level of quality under the baton of Manny Laureano.

You can give to the BSO in three ways:

Preferred: Send a check written to “BSO” to our office at 1800 West Old Shakopee Rd, Bloomington, MN 55431. All funds from these donations go directly to the BSO, and allow us to use every penny of your generous donation.

Online: You may give via our PayPal donation link. This method has a nominal processing fee, but is convenient for many users. A PayPal account is not required — you may check out as a guest — and helps us get about 97% of your donation.

You may also give on our GiveMN.org page. This is the link to use if you plan to make other Give to the Max Day donations on Thursday, November 15. We appreciate that Give to the Max Day makes us eligible for $500 Golden Tickets which are given out at random during the day of giving on November, but this option comes with 7-8% processing fees. You may choose to cover that fee for us, but we know you work hard and want your money to go a long way, too!

Thank you for supporting the BSO’s efforts to enrich the lives of our audiences and musicians with outstanding performances of challenging, educational, and thoughtfully selected orchestral repertoire.

All donations are tax-deductible to the extend of the law.

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“Musical Milestones” Concert Preview No. 3

Before each concert, we share “Manny’s Musings,” thoughts from our Music Director and Conductor, Manny Laureano. This is the final edition of the “Musings” for the “Musical Milestones” concert that will be performed on Sunday, October 7, 2018.

La Mer by Claude Debussy

Claude Debussy, composer

It is always interesting to see how the visual arts and music seem to express themselves similarly through the ages. From the complex nature of Baroque paintings which often sought to render emotion without the benefit of great exaggeration to the suggestive Impressionist period, music seemed to be a willing accomplice at nearly the same times.

Great composers through the years have never been short on imagination. The greatest of those were always sure to compose and imply rather than hit you over the head with an idea. Whereas Renoir and Monet were content to let you do some of the work with your eye and your mind’s eye, so was Claude Debussy (1862-1918).

Active imaginations are occasionally fed by real-life experiences or desires. Debussy, whose father had been a proud member of the French Navy, would remark one day when it became clear that the maritime life was not in the cards, “…I’ve retained a sincere devotion to the sea. To which you’ll reply that the Atlantic doesn’t exactly wash the foothills of Burgundy …! And that the result could be one of those hack landscapes done in the studio! But I have innumerable memories, and those, in my view, are worth more than a reality…” So, perhaps it was a good thing that Debussy’s renderings in his colorful work, La Mer, benefited from what what his mind saw, rather than his eyes.

It can be easily argued that Debussy’s craft here led to the single greatest work of the Impressionist period even though, as often happens, the initial critical reception was not stunning. Even critics who were friendly to the composer could not wrap their brains around what they had just heard in 1905. With our contemporary ears, the salt air, the freshness of a welcome breeze, and the sound of fish playing below the surface is inescapable to the point where Minnesotans may recognize a section that was used to sell local spring water on a television commercial!


Join Music Director & Conductor Manny Laureano, for the concert, “Musical Milestones featuring Michael Sutton as soloist and conductor for Bach’s A Minor Violin Concerto. The concert takes place on Sunday, October 7, 2018, at 3 p.m., at the Gideon S. Ives Auditorium at the Masonic Heritage Center (11411 Masonic Home Drive, Bloomington)

To learn more about the concert, click here. You can order tickets online through the Masonic Heritage Center Box Office, or by calling 800.514.ETIX.

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“Musical Milestones” Concert Preview No. 2

Before each concert, we share “Manny’s Musings,” thoughts from our Music Director and Conductor, Manny Laureano. This is the second edition of the “Musings” for the “Musical Milestones” concert that will be performed on Sunday, October 7, 2018.

Violin Concerto No. 1 in A Minor by Johann Sebastian Bach

Johann Sebastian Bach (aged 61) in a portrait by Elias Gottlob Haussmann.

You’re a composer and you love what you do. Furthermore, you want listeners to love what you do, because life is easier when you get a paycheck for doing what you love. Johann Sebastian (1685-1750) saw all of his musical output as a glory to God and he wrote music as a form of payback, whether secular or sacred in subject. So it stands to reason that helping people remember your themes through a clever technique called ritornello. The Italian ritornello means “little return” quite literally.

In other words, this technique which was used by Antonio Vivaldi, the Italian Baroque master, consisted of presenting a theme and bringing it back over and over but always with a hint of development to tease the ear and keep things interesting and compelling. Bach’s style in this first concerto for violin is almost aggressive in the way he pushes his themes at the listener as the intense conversation fairly rages between soloist and accompanying forces. The sweetness of the slow movement that follows in C major gives way to a lively dance in 9/8 time back in A minor.

Michael Sutton, Violin

Michael Sutton, Violin & Conductor
photo by Joel Larson


Join Music Director & Conductor Manny Laureano, for the concert, “Musical Milestones featuring Michael Sutton as soloist and conductor for Bach’s A Minor Violin Concerto. The concert takes place on Sunday, October 7, 2018, at 3 p.m., at the Gideon S. Ives Auditorium at the Masonic Heritage Center (11411 Masonic Home Drive, Bloomington)

To learn more about the concert, click here. You can order tickets online through the Masonic Heritage Center Box Office, or by calling 800.514.ETIX.

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“Musical Milestones” Concert Preview No. 1

Before each concert, we share “Manny’s Musings,” thoughts from our Music Director and Conductor, Manny Laureano. This is the first edition of the “Musings” for the “Musical Milestones” concert that will be performed on Sunday, October 7, 2018.

Overture to Candide by Leonard Bernstein

Leonard Bernstein

Imagine a life that consists of working a decent job from 9 to 5, five days a week that has you looking forward to those blessed 2 weeks of vacation. There are promotions, a home upgrade or two, birthdays and graduations… all followed one day by a retirement and perhaps many days of earned fishing trips as you rest your head against the memories of a good life free of frequent drama.

The Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990) that had one of the most productive 1954’s imaginable could never have sat still long enough to think of living a life as sedate as the one I described. In fact, this pianist/conductor/composer (put those in any order you like) from Lawrence, Massachusetts, was living a prolific and successful decade — one that could easily be the envy of any musician.

In that decade he composed minor and major works that helped develop the language that was clearly “Lenny” from a melodic and harmonic sense. Peter Pan, Trouble in Tahiti, Wonderful Town, the soundtrack for On the Waterfront and its corresponding orchestral suite, the Serenade for Violin and Orchestra, and finally, West Side Story were written and performed. All this while conducting ubiquitously, as well as being appointed to succeed Serge Koussevitsky as the head of conducting for the Tanglewood Music Festival, and producing television programs designed to educate all of America about classical music’s greatest works. He even allowed Felicia Montealegre to convince him that they should marry. Somehow, in the middle of all this, a collaboration with Lillian Hellman spawned a bitingly cynical bit of theater in 1956 called Candide.

Using Voltaire’s classic story as its basis, Bernstein managed to provide the perfect musical context to the acid-laced words from Hellman’s pen. Getting there was no easy feat, however, as the gallery of musical theater personalities all had different ideas about scenery, timing, and deadlines, and because Hellman had a reputation for taking her time. Of course, Bernstein didn’t help matters by going off to Rome to conduct opera performances with Maria Callas, leading to an interminable gestation for this wild musical child.

With Felicia now pregnant with their second child and bills piling up (the Bernstein’s knew how to spend money but saving it was not a huge priority) it truly is a wonder that the work ever got written. But written it was to tepid reception by the critics. It didn’t gain the respect it would eventually garner until the idea to engage noted Broadway Hal Prince in a much more successful revival in 1974. Prince was merciless in cutting what he felt was a bloated original version down to 105 minutes and preserving only the absolute best of the musical offerings.

The operetta brings to life the misadventures of a Professor Pangloss and his students Candide and his Cunegonde as they search for the best their lives can offer in this “best of all possible worlds.” They endure all manner of absurd hardships only to realize what Dorothy Gale learned with a click of her ruby slippers: After searching for their hearts’ desire, there really is no place like home.

Join Music Director & Conductor Manny Laureano, for the concert, “Musical Milestones featuring Michael Sutton as soloist and conductor for Bach’s A Minor Violin Concerto. The concert takes place on Sunday, October 7, 2018, at 3 p.m., at the Gideon S. Ives Auditorium at the Masonic Heritage Center (11411 Masonic Home Drive, Bloomington)

To learn more about the concert, click here. You can order tickets online through the Masonic Heritage Center Box Office, or by calling 800.514.ETIX.

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Announcing the 2018-19 Concert Season

The Bloomington Symphony Orchestra is thrilled to announce the 2018-19 concert season, it’s sixth under Music Director and Conductor Manny  Laureano.

October 7, 2018 :: Musical Milestones || BUY TICKETS

November 18, 2018 :: Romantically Yours || BUY TICKETS

February 24, 2019 :: From Boisterous to Pastoral || BUY FLEX TICKETS

May 5, 2019 :: Music in 3D: #6 || BUY FLEX TICKETS

We are excited to perform works ranging from Bach to Bernstein. We hope you will join us for any or all of the season concerts. To learn more, click on the title of the concert and purchase tickets with the link to the right.

You can also click on the images below to download our 2018-19 Season Brochure.

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