Roosevelt Island Orchestra
Benjamin Hochman, music director
The Roosevelt Island Orchestra was founded in 2015 by conductor Benjamin Hochman. The musicians of the orchestra include current students and recent graduates of distinguished music conservatories such as Juilliard, Curtis, and New England Conservatory, who play alongside members of Carnegie Hall’s Ensemble Connect and some of New York’s premiere chamber ensembles and orchestras.
The group is committed to playing orchestral music with the immediacy, vibrancy and spontaneity of chamber music. In repertoire ranging from Beethoven to Jessie Montgomery, the orchestra consistently brings outstanding performances to Roosevelt Island.
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Benjamin Hochman
Winner of the Avery Fisher Career Grant, pianist and conductor Benjamin Hochman has established a vibrant international musical presence through concerts with the New York, Los Angeles, and Prague Philharmonic Orchestras and his Carnegie Hall debut with the Israel Philharmonic. A graduate of the Juilliard Conducting Program where he studied with Alan Gilbert, he has also attended the Tanglewood Conducting Seminar, served as musical assistant at Mostly Mozart, and guest conducted the Orlando Philharmonic, Santa Fe Pro Musica and The Orchestra Now. He is founder and music director of the Roosevelt Island Orchestra. A graduate of the Curtis Institute of Music and the Mannes College of Music, where his principal teachers were Claude Frank and Richard Goode, his latest album for Avie, Variations, was named by The New York Times one of the Best Classical Music Recordings of 2015.
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Past performances
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June 4, 2022
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Gideon Klein
Partita for String Orchestra
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Robert Schumann
Concerto for Cello and Orchestra in A minor, Op. 129
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Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 7 in A Major, Op. 92
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August 18, 2021
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Grażyna Bacewicz
Concerto for String Orchestra
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George Walker
Lyric for Strings
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Franz Schubert
Symphony No. 5 in B-Flat Major, D. 485
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March 23, 2019
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Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Overture to the Marriage of Figaro, K.492
Piano Concerto No. 17 in G major, K. 453
Piano Concerto No. 24 in C minor, K. 491
October 27, 2018
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Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 8
Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Serenade for Strings
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March 11, 2017
Jessie Montgomery
Starburst
Richard Wagner
Siegried Idyll, WWV 103
Antonín DvoÅ™ák
Serenade for Strings, Op. 22
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December 5, 2015
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Claude Debussy
Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun
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Ludwig van Beethoven
Symphony No. 1
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