Which colleges have the best Orchestra?
Are you asking about which school of music has the best orchestra for its performance major students? All the top programs will have strong orchestras. Rice Juilliard CIM Eastman Curtis Indiana Michigan Bard etc. But if you’re asking about orchestras for non performance majors, that’s something else.
As I replied on this thread http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1830570-searching-for-colleges-with-a-strong-orchestra-programs-open-to-non-majors-p1.html:
This question comes up every few months on the Music Major Forum - there are threads addressing it going back to the beginning of College Confidential! You can often check out youtube videos of college orchestras to get a feel. It is not unusual at all for a college orchestra not to be at the high level of a regional youth orchestra. On the other hand, regional youth orchestras, and sometimes community orchestras, usually accept college students as performers - something to keep in mind for schools where its own orchestra is not up to snuff.
(From a quick google search)
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/444579-strong-orchestras-at-liberal-arts-schools-p1.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1748416-what-colleges-have-good-music-orchestra-programs.html
http://talk.qa.collegeconfidential.com/parents-forum/1727619-music-for-non-music-major-at-merit-aid-liberal-arts-college-p1.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/984536-orchestra-seats-for-non-majors-clarinet.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/music-major/634244-college-orchestras-p1.html
http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/college-search-selection/1621956-universities-with-strong-orchestras-even-if-non-music-major.html
Thanks @spiritmanager! Question is straight up which college orchestras are the best.
Why would you ask? This is really a meaningless question - and I am sorry if I sound argumentative or rude. College orchestras (or any orchestra) aren’t like football teams - the arts are quite subjective. (Did this question arise from SuperBowl day???)
If you are looking for real info on a program, it’s better to focus on the goals of that particular program.
By the way, be very aware that when looking at college/conservatory orchestras, you may be comparing apples and oranges. Some programs have orchestra that meets regularly (like a class) for two or three or four or five days every week for the entire semester. Everyone required to be there every day, every week, every month, every concert. The “seating” may rotate or be static. Other programs, especially conservatory programs I’m aware of, have rotations - a player may be off from a certain concert, but assigned to others. Seating and personnel is likely to be different for each concert rotation. A student may be assigned, for example, to a large orchestra concert with soloist, then a chamber performance, then an opera with weeks when they are not attending orchestra rehearsals at all. And, the norms for winds can be even more complex. Some places winds are assigned a spot in orchestra for an entire term, other places by concert and the principal and assisting roles may or may not change depending on school.
@Momofadult - All college orchestras are not created equal. The best compete for the top musicians on each instrument, and many factors influence which schools those students pick. Of importance are areas such as faculty, facilities, location, reputation, cost, placement record, etc.
These top orchestras may be part of a music conservatory, college of music within a university, or even a program with an undergraduate department of music. Some of these orchestras may feature mainly graduate music performance majors, while others only undergraduate music performance majors. Some orchestras may include non-music majors.
Bottom line, many of these orchestras are a source of pride for their schools, and are integral for key donors nationally and patrons of the arts locally. So yes, let’s discuss which college orchestras are the best.
The best college orchestra is the one your kid plays in. Especially if they have a solo. 
Well, if this is really important to you, you may have to cross Michigan off your list. I’m sure the top orchestra is excellent but it doesn’t have the lofty university or community position that you seem to think it should. That would be the football team. I live in Ann Arbor. In fact, I grew up here and my mother was faculty at UMich and I have many friends who work for the U now. Nobody talks about the orchestra.
In my limited experience, the kind of data that you mention (reputation, placement record, etc.) seem to be be more often attributed to a particular studio, not an ensemble.
The question itself is kind of meaningless, because it is asking a general question out of context. There is a big difference between the orchestras at top music performance programs like Juilliard, Rice, U Mich and so forth, then an orchestra at colleges that don’t have performance degrees yet have strong orchestra and chamber programs, to schools that don’t offer performance degrees and where it is a lot more casual. Some music performance schools (NYU comes to mind) don’t have that strong an orchestra IMO, lot of the kids I have known who have gone to NYU do New York Youth Symphony because they feel the orchestra program isn/t that strong. Some of the conservatories have very strong programs, but their orchestra and chamber may be so so. Ivy league schools, though they don’t offer performance degrees, have pretty strong orchestral and chamber programs because they do in effect recruit strong music players, a lot of the graduating classes of the top pre college programs end up going to elite colleges, but not as music majors. On the other hand, orchestras open to non majors in programs with music majors often play in different ensembles entirely, and in reverse, some programs that do have music performance programs mix and match them with non majors, so the level may not be as high.
Curtis by all measure is one of the top music programs in the country, but their orchestra often gets nailed by critics because as an ensemble it doesn’t always work well, because the kids tend to all play like soloists, rather than as cohesively as they could.
in the end, the question all comes down to what you are looking for, what kind of program/experience. If you asked me for a non major looking for a top level opportunity, I would tell them one of the ivies or some of the other elite level schools, if they are looking at it as a performance major, I would mention Juilliard and some of the other top music school orchestras that are not diluted by non majors. Also, defining the best also is subjective, besides the usual “the orchestra my kid is in is the best”, it also comes down to a matter of taste and perspective, I have heard great performances from almost all the top music schools, and have heard crappy ones as well, depends a lot on the conductor, how the orchestra is chosen (for example, Juilliard has several orchestras, usually one of them is for the kids who demonstrate the will and skills to put together a top level performance), and also sometimes the time of year, if the kids are busy with getting ready for juries, auditions for various things, they may not have as much time to prep for orchestra.
Can I cast an early vote for @stradmom for post of the year?
@musicprnt - so you agree some college orchestras are better than others. Some much better.
So for a student seeking an orchestral career, wouldn’t it be valuable to know which the best college orchestras are?
Let me throw one out there a really solid orchestra at a school without an undergraduate music performance major:
Yale - Yale Symphony Orchestra
http://yso.yalecollege.yale.edu
Your assumption that a “good” college orchestral experience leads to an orchestral job is false.
@clarinetdad16:
Like I said, it all depends on what you are looking for. Yes, the Yale (and Princeton, and Columbia) symphonies are a step above what you would find at a typical school that didn’t offer a performance degree, but for example, they may not be on the level of a conservatory orchestra, because the level of players in the conservatory program are higher.
If we are assuming here a kid that wants to be an orchestral musician, then the real question isn’t which programs have the best orchestra, but rather, what is the best way to prepare for a career as an orchestral musician, and it isn’t the same thing.
When you audition for an orchestra, where you went to school as a name means nothing, so a kid could go to Juilliard, have played in the top level Juilliard orchestra, and lose out on an audition to a kid who went to some unknown school.The orchestra doesn’t look and say “Oh, Joe Smith went to Yale and played in the Yale Symphony, they are great, so hire them”, it doesn’t work like a normal job.
Being prepared for an orchestra audition is a combination of factors, and it depends on the musician and their background. For example, as I mentioned in a prior post, NYU’s orchestra program isn’t that strong in my opinion, but a lot of the kids do New York Youth Symphony, which is a superb ensemble playing on the level many professional orchestras should be playing at, so they get a lot from that. While I have seen kids come out of the ivy music programs and get into orchestras, those same kids often have a strong orchestral background, many of them went to top pre college programs or were in top level youth orchestras like NYYS, Seattle, etc, and went to Yale or Harvard or Princeton for an academic degree but kept playing…so is the orchestra good because it trains the kids, or is it good because the kids are already well trained? My son is going to a conservatory that has a good orchestral program, it likely isn’t on the level of Juilliard’s top orchestra, but he didn’t care because he had a lot of orchestral experience before conservatory on a high level, but he went where he did for the teacher…so it all depends on the kid.
To be honest, most of it depends on the kid and his needs, and trying to decide which school has the best orchestra is really about which program is best for the kid, because Yale and Harvard and Princeton and the like, who offer strong symphony programs, don’t offer performance degrees, it could be the environment won’t work for an aspiring musician, and that is the key. To get into any kind of decent orchestra, let alone a top tier one, requires individual playing on an incredible level as well as the ability to work in an ensemble, and those programs may not work to help drive a kid forward, it is why people talk about looking at all the factors, not just a few. On the other hand, if a kid goes to a program without a decent orchestral program, it is likely they will fail, not because the orchestra is not good, but because it likely means the music program itself is not that strong and that is reflected in the orchestra.
Success in music is a multi fascetted thing, and where you went to school in general only works in terms of how well it prepares a student, how well it drives them forward, and no single thing alone does that, and the success is with finding a program that drives a particular student. Yale has a great symphony, for example, but a lot of those kids have zero intention of ever going into music, they have intentions of other things, and that kind of environment may not work for a serious music student (and some serious music students would love Yale over a conservatory, because they don’t want the conservatory experience…though it could be that the lack of thngs like theory instruction, ear training and the like would hurt them if they did want to go into an orchestra).
It is much like the whole music school rankings game, in the end a lot of it comes down to subjective criteria that rankings cannot do a good job evaluating. In the ‘real world’ of jobs, a kid coming out of Yale or Harvard can have a leg up on getting jobs, especially in certain fields, because of perceptions and the ‘old boy network’, in music, while there are cases where you went to school can help with finding gigs and such (networking at a place like Juilliard or CIM or Curtis does go on), the name itself won’t get you much, so even if music critics listened to every major college orchestra or symphony and rated them, it wouldn’t matter in the real world.
i hear Eastman has a really solid orchestra
While I agree that the question is extremely open ended, it was clearly intended to be and therefore should be taken as an absolute. Do you think School A has a better orchestra than School B, etc. to the point where you think it is the best? If you are familiar enough with school orchestra’s to have an opinion, great. If not, move on to another thread. If, as I personally suspect, there are extremely few people that hear enough different school orchestras to have a meaningful opinion, then the question cannot be answered. But there is no need for posts that do everything except address the question asked.
“But there is no need for posts that do everything except address the question asked.”
There is a reason, if the question is based on a premise that may be untrue, then maybe it is relevant to explain why the question cannot be answered and the supposition behind it, that playing in one of the ‘best orchestras’ may necessarily be the best thing for a particular student. It is like ranking violin teachers or any music teacher, teaching is an individuistic thing, one person’s gold is another person’s bad deal shrug. With that, I’ll leave it to others to create a magic list of college orchestras.
Every question can be answered. That said, it does not follow that the answer may be meaningful, useful, or capable of being correct or incorrect. If the question is not capable of falling into one of these categories, why is it worth asking.
Here is a recent review of the Curtis Symphony:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/arts/music/review-the-curtis-symphony-orchestra-dives-into-mahler-and-more.html?_r=0&referer=https://www.google.com/
A recent review of the Juilliard Orchestra:
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/11/26/arts/music/review-juilliard-orchestra-grabbing-the-ring-cycle.html?referer=
A recent review of the Peabody Symphony:
http://www.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/arts/artsmash/bal-a-stirring-mahler-ninth-from-murai-peabody-symphony-20160201-story.html
A review of the Eastman Philharmonia:
http://m.rochestercitynewspaper.com/rochester/classical-review-peter-serkin-with-the-eastman-philharmonia/Content?oid=2503695
MODERATOR’S NOTE
Not speaking for @fallenchemist, but I agree with you. While I did not read through the posts that he deleted, experience has shown that threads like this tend to get derailed very easily by two or more posters having a back and forth discussion as to why his/her opinion of “X orchestra” is correct, and I suspect fallenchemist is trying to get the thread back on track. Expressing an opinion is fine and encouraged; having a debate about it is not.
IMO, @stradmom has the definite answer anyway. 
Actually, no, that’s not what happened at all. NONE of us have expressed any opinions about which orchestra is “best” because none of us feel that it has any relevance.
I only deleted one that said something about beer. Actually what I meant is that the question is probably too open ended. Maybe what the OP meant was “Who are generally considered to be the best college orchestras”. I assume within that world there are general reputations (for example North Texas State, now U North Texas, was generally acknowledged to have one of, if not the finest jazz band of the colleges) and that those could be commented on. The word “best” still leaves tons of room for interpretation, given that we are talking universities/conservatories. So unlike professional orchestras where one is usually only talking about performance, here it could also mean best for instruction, best for ability to participate, best for connections… Again, only the OP can clarify and thus hopefully keep it on track.