Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra

The Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, which also performs as the Cincinnati Pops, celebrated its 125th anniversary in the 2019-20 season. One of America’s finest and most versatile ensembles, the internationally acclaimed CSO attracts the best musicians, artists and conductors from around the world to Cincinnati. With new commissions and groundbreaking initiatives like LUMENOCITY, the MusicNOW Festival collaboration, and CSO Proof, the Orchestra is committed to being a place of experimentation. In the 2025-26 season, Cristian Mӑcelaru joins the Orchestra as its 14th Music Director, after serving as Music Director Designate in the 2024-25 season, adding to the CSO’s distinguished roster of past music directors that includes Leopold Stokowski, Eugène Ysaÿe, Fritz Reiner, Max Rudolf, Jesús López Cobos, Paavo Järvi and Louis Langrée. A champion of new music, the Orchestra has given American premieres of works by such composers as Debussy, Ravel, Mahler and Bartók and has commissioned works that have since become mainstays of the classical repertoire, including Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man. The CSO was the first orchestra to be broadcast to a national radio audience (1921) and the third to record (1917). The CSO was the first American orchestra to make a world tour sponsored by the U.S. Department of State and continues to tour domestically and internationally, most recently to Asia in March 2017 and a celebrated three-week European tour in August and September 2017.