Berkeley Symphony

Berkeley Symphony is a regional orchestra serving the East Bay, performing a mix of classical and chamber concerts this season at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland and the Hillside Club in Berkeley. The orchestra has long been known for pairing standard symphonic repertoire with new and recent music, often including a living composer's work alongside familiar pieces on the same program. A first-timer can expect a relatively intimate hall, a program note or spoken introduction that helps place the newer piece in context, and a mix of adventurous and approachable music rather than an all-warhorse evening. It draws players from the wider Bay Area freelance and teaching community.

Berkeley Symphony traces its start to 1969, when it was founded as a community-rooted orchestra in Berkeley, California, drawing on the musical life around the University of California campus. It was known in its earliest years as the Berkeley Promenade Orchestra, a name that signaled its informal approach, and it later took the Berkeley Symphony name as it grew into a fully professional ensemble.

The orchestra's identity was shaped above all by Kent Nagano, who led it for more than two decades beginning in the late 1970s. Under Nagano the group built a reputation far larger than its budget, championing music by living composers and giving American and West Coast first performances of works by figures including Olivier Messiaen and John Adams. That period established the pattern the orchestra still follows: new music presented as a normal part of a concert rather than as a curiosity. Joana Carneiro served as music director after Nagano, continuing the commitment to recent scores, and Nagano was later given the title music director laureate.

Berkeley Symphony has performed for much of its life in Zellerbach Hall on the University of California, Berkeley campus, and it has used a range of East Bay venues for chamber-scale and community programs. Today it presents a compact season of orchestral and chamber concerts, performing this year at the Henry J. Kaiser Center for the Arts in Oakland and at The Hillside Club in Berkeley, with Nicole Paiement on the podium. Alongside its concerts, the orchestra maintains music education partnerships with Berkeley schools.