American Folklore

“American Folklore” presents works by American composers Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Christopher Theofanidis, Bernard Rands, and Omar Thomas. The Yale Symphony Orchestra was founded in 1965 by a group of students who recognized the growing potential of a large orchestral ensemble on campus. With the goal of promoting new music and performing not only works from the Western canon but also by lesser-known composers, the orchestra has become a hub for students playing orchestral music at a conservatory level. In its more than fifty-year history, the orchestra has toured twelve countries, including Turkey, Russia, Brazil, and Mexico, and premiered over fifty new works by composers such as Leonard Bernstein, Benjamin Britten, and Caroline Shaw. YSO alumni are active in major orchestras around the world, including the New York Philharmonic, the Israel Philharmonic, the Boston Symphony Orchestra, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, and the Berlin Philharmonic. The YSO is led by William Boughton. Through playing in orchestras, he discovered his passion for conducting, a craft he studied with George Hurst and Sir Colin Davis. In 1980, he founded the English Symphony Orchestra, with which he commissioned 21 new works, made over 90 recordings, many of which reached the Top 10 of the U.S. Billboard charts, and toured worldwide. He was a guest conductor with orchestras around the world, from San Francisco to St. Petersburg. From 2018 to 2025, he was the music director of the Yale Symphony Orchestra, whose repertoire, as heard on this recording, focused on a blend of Western classical music, American heritage, and contemporary music.