About the Bryan Symphony Orchestra
The Bryan Symphony Orchestra
The 49th season of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra at Tennessee Tech University, the only professional symphony in a rural area of Tennessee, honors timeless classics with interpretations by three young soloists on the rise. This season’s programming showcases music by two living American composers, its namesake, Charles Faulkner Bryan, and several symphonic titans, including Beethoven and Schubert.
That these compositions -- performed by professional musicians on the faculty of TTU and from the symphonies of Nashville, Knoxville and Chattanooga -- are available to the residents of the Upper Cumberland region is due to the vision of the symphony's founders.
Begun in 1963-64, the symphony has brought both classical and pops music to its audience, thanks to the concerted efforts of both the community and university. Its annual programming also provides a unique opportunity for a select group of outstanding music students to play alongside their teachers and mentors.
BSO concerts are a collaborative effort of the community-based non-profit Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association and the Tennessee Tech Department of Music and Art. Performances are in the Wattenbarger Auditorium in the Bryan Fine Arts Building on the TTU campus. The building -- and orchestra -- were named for teacher and composer Charles Faulkner Bryan, a native son of the Upper Cumberland, the first Tennessee musician to be awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, and a former chairman of the music program at Tech. The orchestra’s subscription concerts are regularly sold out and draw audiences from every county surrounding its home in Putnam: Cumberland, DeKalb, Jackson, Overton, Smith, Warren, and White.
A member of the League of American Orchestras, the BSO is managed by the independent Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association Board, which consists of both community and university representatives. Its advisory members are its music director, who is a member of the TTU faculty; its executive director, who reports directly to the board and is responsible for the BSO's daily operations; the president of TTU; the director of Putnam County Schools; and an orchestra representative from the TTU faculty. TTU is an important partner of the BSOA, providing in-kind support, including rehearsal and performance space, as well as the participation of the music director and faculty and student orchestra members.
The BSOA is the current manifestation of an earlier auxiliary group, the Tech Community Symphony Guild, which changed its name to the Bryan Symphony Guild at the same time the Tech Community Symphony Orchestra was renamed the Bryan Symphony Orchestra. The guild supported and helped guide the ensemble from 1967 until 1998, when it merged with the Bryan Symphony Orchestra, becoming the Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association. Over the years, the guild was recognized several times by the League of American Orchestras, winning the Sally Parker Award in both 1995 and 1998 for its support of the orchestra's educational program. In 2003, the BSOA won the league's Gold Ribbon award for innovative fund raising. And in 2010, the BSO shared the league's Gold Baton Award with other members of the "Made in America" consortium that commissioned a new work by composer Joan Tower.
Then, as now, the association's goals include increasing interaction among the BSO's musicians and the local K-12 school system. Bringing music to area youngsters in the form of concerts, classes, and special curricular activities is one way to ensure that children learn to appreciate the joy of music.
Today's BSO is led by Music Director Dan Allcott, former music director and principal conductor of the Atlanta Ballet. Former BSO conductors are Brendan Townsend, music director of the Laredo (Texas) Philharmonic Orchestra and Corpus Christi Area Youth Orchestra; John Dodson, music director of the Adrian Symphony Orchestra in Michigan; Jonathan May, who was artistic director of the Florida Young Artists Orchestra in Orlando and the Central Florida Youth Orchestra in Leesburg and music director of the Flagler Youth Orchestra; and founder James Wattenbarger, who held the baton 25 years before his retirement.
Board of Directors
The Bryan Symphony Orchestra mission:
To provide an orchestra of the highest artistic standards, to perform regularly a broad range of repertoire for a wide and diverse audience, to provide quality educational experiences for all ages, and to serve as a leader and a continuing force in the cultural life of the Upper Cumberland region.
Bryan Symphony Orchestra Association Board of Directors 2011-2012
• President Mike Porten, city president, Regions Bank
• Vice President Sean O’Neil, Averitt Express
• Treasurer Lillian Hartgrove, vice president of economic development, Cookeville-Putnam County Chamber of Commerce
• Secretary Donna Simpson, attorney
• John and Mary Bressler, community volunteers
• Marilyn Brinker, community volunteer
• Julie Huffines, Community Bank of the Cumberlands
• Teena King, nurse, Putnam County Health Department
• Arthur LaBar, chairperson, Department of Music and Art, TTU
• Leo McGee, associate vice president emeritus, TTU
• Billie Stingley, owner, Streamliner Creative Group
• Angelo Volpe, president emeritus, TTU
• Bill Zechman, agent, State Farm Insurance
Advisory Members:
- Dan Allcott, Music Director and Conductor
- Robert R. Bell, Tennessee Tech University President
- Kathleen Airhart, Putnam County Director of Schools
- Charles Decker, Orchestra Representative
- Gail Luna, Executive Director
Music Director
As he enters his ninth season as music director of the Bryan Symphony Orchestra, Dan Allcott has become the second-longest serving conductor of the Upper Cumberland’s only professional orchestra.
Associate professor and director of orchestras, Maestro Allcott joined the Tennessee Tech University faculty in 2003. Last year, he concluded his 10th season with the Atlanta Ballet, where he conducted more than 300 performances as music director and principal conductor from 2000 to 2010.
Allcott studied conducting with Imre Pallo and Thomas Baldner at Indiana University, and in 1996, was appointed the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra's Schmitt Conducting Fellow, a position he held for three years. In 1998, Allcott was named the first Herbert von Karajan Fellow of the American Austrian Foundation at the Salzburg Festival and has been a participant in the Nicolai Malko and Grzegorz Fitelberg competitions in Europe. He has conducted in master classes with Michael Tilson Thomas and Gunther Schuller with the American Symphony Orchestra League and the Conductors' Guild.
He received a master of music in cello performance from Indiana University where he continued his doctoral studies in both the conducting and cello programs. For three years, Allcott was associate instructor of conducting at Indiana University, frequently conducting the university's five orchestras and the New Music Ensemble.
Maestro Allcott is active from coast to coast as a guest conductor, educator and clinician. After conducting in the mountains of California last season, he'll finish this season with an Eastport Strings concert in the easternmost municipality in the United States. He has conducted more than 40 performances of the Bryan Symphony. He is president of the Tennessee Chapter of the American String Teachers Association and music director of the Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra and Oak Ridge Chorus.
Our Musicians
They make a rich and complex sound, the 50 to 80 musicians who perform for you during each Bryan Symphony Orchestra concert, each individual part indistinguishable from the total effect – with the exception, of course, of solos.
The musicians you see onstage during every Bryan Symphony Orchestra performance vary according to the program. The string section alone represents three states, six symphony orchestras and three universities. The BSO draws upon a pool of nearly 50 performers in its string section. A few of those players are TTU music majors; the university’s Music Department relies on the BSO as a laboratory experience for its most select student musicians.
Led by concertmaster Wei Tsun Chang of the TTU faculty, the BSO string section is a diverse group. Most of the musicians are affiliated with several orchestras or chamber ensembles or universities – or all of the above. Tennessee Tech has always been the home of the BSO, and many of its faculty perform with the BSO, but to fill the stage, particularly the large string section, the BSO hires musicians from orchestras throughout Tennessee and even into Kentucky and Alabama.
The BSO's woodwind, brass and percussion sections are largely made up of resident faculty with the most select students from their respective studios. Each faculty musician teaches, of course, but also performs professionally on and off campus -- whether in other ensembles, in Nashville's recording studios, or as a clinician or adjudicator in education programs beside Tennessee Tech's.
Visit some of the Bryan Symphony’s closest friends and neighbors, all of whom represent the musicians you see on our stage:
• Nashville Symphony Orchestra
• Oak Ridge Symphony Orchestra
• Knoxville Symphony Orchestra
• Chattanooga Symphony Orchestra
• Huntsville Symphony Orchestra
• Tennessee Tech University Department of Music and Art
