Celebrating 50 years during the 2024-2025 season, New York City’s Orchestra of St. Luke’s (OSL) and its acclaimed concert musicians make their artistic home in Carnegie Hall, where OSL has performed more than any other orchestra since its premiere there in 1983. Bernard Labadie, an internationally renowned specialist in 18th-century music, was named OSL’s Principal Conductor in 2018 and will step down in 2025, concluding an expansive and critically commended tenure. OSL’s annual season features a concert series in each of Carnegie Hall’s three venues as well as the Visionary Sounds and DeGaetano Composition Institute programs focused on contemporary composers at The DiMenna Center for Classical Music, the rehearsal, recording, and performance facility OSL built in 2011 in Manhattan’s Hudson Yards neighborhood. OSL proudly collaborates with Paul Taylor Dance Company in its Lincoln Center season each year and performs with a variety of artistic partners at venues throughout the city and beyond. Founded in 1974 when a group of virtuoso chamber musicians began performing together in Greenwich Village at The Church of St. Luke in the Fields, the ensemble later expanded into an orchestra before catching fire in New York’s classical music scene. OSL has participated in 120 recordings, four of which have won Grammy Awards, has commissioned more than 75 new works, and has given more than 200 world, U.S., and New York City premieres. OSL champions composers from groups historically underrepresented in classical music. In recent seasons, it has presented works by Kinan Azmeh, Margaret Bonds, Valerie Coleman, Julius Eastman, Wynton Marsalis, Florence Price, Rita Dove, and Chen Yi, among others. Central to OSL’s mission, the Education and Community Engagement program presents free concerts to thousands of New York City public school students each year; offers the 120-student-strong Youth Orchestra of St. Luke’s (YOSL), the city’s only youth orchestra under the umbrella of a professional group; provides a mentorship program for pre-professional musicians; and brings accessible concerts to all five boroughs.
Full OSL organizational biography
