Timothy Muffitt

NICHOLE JIANG - STAFF WRITER Music Director Timothy Muffitt conducts as the Music School Festival Orchestra performs on Monday July

NICHOLE JIANG - STAFF WRITER Music Director Timothy Muffitt conducts the Music School Festival Orchestra during their opening performance of

The Music School Festival Orchestra will perform onstage for the first time in over a year at 8:15 p.m. Monday,

ILLUSTRATION BY MADELINE DEABLER/DIGITAL EDITOR John Milbauer, co-chair of Chautauqua’s School of Music Piano Program, watched Christopher Taylor’s afternoon piano

Monday, Aug. 13, is the last chance of the season to hear instrumental students from the Music School Festival Orchestra

Review by Tom Di Nardo  The third and final program of the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra’s Beethoven Festival was a gem,

Stilian Kirov leads the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra in a performance of Symphony No. 5 in C minor, op. 67 in

After seven weeks learning, practicing and performing with one another, the Music School Festival Orchestra will play their final concert.

Behind every great orchestra is a great conductor – and behind him, is a great conducting fellow. “The conducting fellowship

Most of the musicians in the Music School Festival Orchestra didn’t even know one another’s names a week ago. “This

Students in Chautauqua’s School of Music have more to learn than technique, intonation and timing. They also have to grasp time travel. “The difference is that, whereas the Beethoven symphony hasn’t changed since it was written in the early 19th century, the context in which it’s being performed and heard is dramatically different,” said Timothy Muffitt, music director of the Music School Festival Orchestra. “So we, as musicians, have to have an awareness of that.”

An orchestra has many musicians, but it breathes as a unit. For some symphony orchestras, it may take years to foster the kind of bond necessary to produce top quality music, but students in the Music School Festival Orchestra have only seven weeks. At 8:15 p.m. tonight, the MSFO will perform its first of five concerts in the Amphitheater. Led by music director and conductor Timothy Muffitt, the concert will feature four works that would appear at home on any professional symphony’s program. However, there will be something that sets the MSFO apart.