Conference Highlights

 

We can’t wait to welcome you to Houston, one of the most diverse cultural and culinary destinations in the country!

As soon as you arrive, we invite you to get wide-eyed, take in the scale and richness of our location, and dream. Through that lens, we’ll imagine new ways to deepen relationships with our audiences and communities, forge pathways to financial sustainability, creatively use AI, increase diversity and inclusion both on and offstage, grow artistically, and invite the voices of the next generation to help shape what comes next. 

You’ll enjoy multiple orchestral performances throughout Conference, including the Houston Youth Symphony at the Opening Session, a performance elective with ROCO featuring women composers, and our host orchestra bringing Music Director Juraj Valčuha’s innovative visual approach to semi-staged opera to life at the Houston Symphony’s Salome in Concert.

All general and elective sessions have been designed to be relevant for a wide range of orchestra roles and budget sizes. On Thursday and Saturday, those associated with member orchestras are invited to attend role-specific constituency meetings. And this year we’re introducing a new format called Discovery Sessions — conversation-based cross-constituency learning opportunities open to all Conference attendees.

View the schedule overview to get a sense of the flow of the event, then navigate over to the Conference schedule to see full details. Scroll down to browse general sessions, electives, discovery sessions, performances and networking, and pre-Conference events.

General Sessions

Thursday, June 6

Tech Fair half-day event with showcases of products and services and sharing of technology best practices.

Opening Session and Gold Baton Award with a performance by the Houston Youth Symphony, a keynote from composer and pianist Gabriela Lena Frank, and the presentation of the Gold Baton Award, the League’s highest honor, to Lee Koonce.

Photo credit: Mariah Tauger

Photo credit: Sean Olubode Brown

Friday, June 7

Annual Meeting and Re-Envisioning Audiences with Donna Walker-Kuhne and Dr. Durell Cooper, focusing on the creation of strategies that integrate community engagement, inclusion, and marketing into new holistic approaches to audience development.

Donna Walker-Kuhne. Photo courtesy of the speaker.

Dr. Durell Cooper. Photo credit: Alejandro Garcia.

Saturday, June 8

Closing Luncheon featuring Resilient Sounds, a Houston Symphony project—in partnership with Rice University, University of Houston, and Interfaith Ministries for Greater Houston—celebrating the determination and hope of Houston’s refugee communities. We’ll also hear from Dr. Ahmad Naser Sarmast, Founding Director of the Afghanistan National Institute of Music (ANIM), which fled Taliban-occupied Kabul for Lisbon, where the entire school community was not only granted asylum but also invited to resettle and rebuild.

 

Dr. Ahmad Sarmast. Photo credit: Paul Muller Hahl.

 

Houston Symphony performing Ravel’s Daphnis and Chloe. Photographer: Melissa Taylor.

 
 

Banner: Audience enjoying a concert. Photographer: Melissa Taylor, courtesy of Houston Symphony.