| Biography | The Minnesota Orchestra is an American orchestra based in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Founded in 1903, the Minnesota Orchestra plays most of its concerts at Minneapolis's Orchestra Hall.
Osmo Vänskä is the music director. Andrew Litton is the artistic director of the Orchestra's yearly Sommerfest concert series, and Stanislaw Skrowaczewski is Conductor Laureate.C
Emil Oberhoffer founded the orchestra as the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra in 1903, and it gave its first performance on November 5 of that year. In 1968, the orchestra changed its name to the Minnesota Orchestra. It makes its home in downtown Minneapolis at Orchestra Hall, which was built for the ensemble in 1974. The orchestra's previous hall, starting in 1929, was Northrop Memorial Auditorium on the University of Minnesota's Minneapolis campus.
The orchestra has garnered significant critical praise, including a 2010 description from The New Yorker's Alex Ross as sounding, on one particular evening, like "the greatest orchestra in the world."[ |