One of the rare ensembles in the United States that maintains a roster of full-time professional players, the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra operates under a distinctive leadership model featuring five Artistic Partners rather than a single permanent conductor. Its programming spans an unusually wide spectrum, extending from Baroque works to the newest contemporary scores.
City officials helped initiate the orchestra’s founding in 1959 as a means of attracting audiences to downtown Saint Paul without overlapping the established programs of the Minnesota Orchestra. Leonard Sipe assembled the musicians, and the ensemble presented its debut concert on November 18, 1959, at St. Paul’s Central High School. During the 1980s the group took up residence in the acoustically distinguished Ordway Auditorium while continuing to appear at numerous other Twin Cities locations and sustaining several community-outreach initiatives. In 1968 it became the nation’s first full-time professional chamber orchestra, a distinction it held until 1978.
Sipe departed in 1972 and Dennis Russell Davies took his place, introducing a sustained focus on contemporary music. Violinist and conductor Pinchas Zukerman succeeded Davies in 1980; seven years later a triumvirate assumed leadership, comprising principal conductor Hugh Wolff, director of music Christopher Hogwood, and creative chair John Adams. Wolff advanced to full-time music director in 1992, yet the orchestra persisted in exploring nontraditional governance. Since 2004 it has collaborated with five Artistic Partners who may serve as instrumentalists, conductors, or vocalists; the roster has included violinist Joshua Bell (2004–2007), conductor Edo de Waart (2010–2014), and clarinetist Martin Fröst (2016–present). Kyu-Young Kim has held the post of artistic director since 2016, though no permanent conductor or music director exists. The ensemble comprises roughly thirty musicians, a number reduced after financial pressures in 2012 and 2013, yet expandable for larger undertakings; it presents approximately 130 concerts each season.
Its recording history reaches back at least to the early 1980s, when an LP of Copland’s Appalachian Spring ranked among the first commercially issued digital recordings. In the compact-disc era the orchestra has appeared on CBS/Sony, Apex, and Teldec, among other imprints, before moving to Nonesuch in 2021 for a set of Mozart piano concertos featuring Artistic Partner Jeremy Denk.
