Best College Orchestra

I’m still not sure what the OP is getting at, but if your student wants an orchestra career in a top orchestra, they should learn to play with extreme technical accuracy and (at least in the case of strings) work with a teacher, and this does not necessarily need to be the primary teacher) on excerpts. It really doesn’t matter what you do in your college orchestra; it’s the audition that will matter. Connections do help, but the audition is the key.

@glassharmonica - you seem to be well versed in orchestral music.

Which college orchestras would you deem among the best?

That is the purpose of the thread. If that question is not for you, no need to keep questioning the question.

As already noted above, I think that Rice and CIM have the best reputations for college orchestras. I apologize for my impudence in adding what mistakenly thought was a useful comment to the discussion.

NYO-USA might be a great program, but saying it is the best hands down cannot be backed up by anything objective. First of all, by its very charter, it keeps out students who are performance majors in college/conservatory, which limits its pool (quite deliberately). They get a lot of strong players in it, but its whole purpose is to give kids a chance who aren’t music majors. It also is very, very hard to compare it against either college programs, or programs like the New York Youth Symphony, Seattle Youth symphony and some of the others, they tend to attract high level music students, many of whom go on to performance careers.

I think it is a great program, but saying it is the best is very, very problematic, I think it is better to say it is one of many high level programs out there, and given that its focus is often a bit different than other youth orchestras, it really depends on the student and what they want out of it.

NYO USA is essentially an all-star US ensemble for those in High School and they are brought together for two weeks in NY to prepare and then they tour for two weeks.

NYO is more of a festival orchestra than a university orchestra.

I don’t know how college orchestras are evaluated in general, but Downbeat Magazine has an annual “Best U.S. College Orchestra” award. University of Northern Colorado Greeley has won this award several times, including in 1999, 2001, 2002, 2004, 2006, 2007, 2011, 2012, and 2013. UNC Greeley also won “Best U.S. College Classical Ensemble” in 2010. Does anyone know of any other organization that gives out awards for student orchestras?

The Downbeat awards are competitions, so the ensembles have to “enter” to win. I doubt many classical ensemble bother to compete since it’s a jazz magazine.

Well if we are talking Jazz Orchestras, the absolute top one is the UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS (UNT), One O’Clock Lab Band. They have 7 GRAMMY nominations (most recently in 2015), plus numerous Down Beat magazine awards - no other college ensemble comes close to this type of repeated external validation.

Moreover, alumni from the UNT Jazz Studies program fare very well in the profession, with many of them are starting their careers with GRAMMY nominations under their belts; not many other music schools can say that! In the end, to have a college-level ensemble that so consistently achieves the highest level professional recognition, places UNT in a league of its own.

The Grammy winning group Snarky Puppy had its beginnings at UNT.