The Las Cruces Symphony Orchestra is gearing up for its 66th season, which begins in September and continues through spring 2025 with live performances in Las Cruces of beloved popular and classical music, including the world premiere of a brand new work.
It will be “a wonderful and varied season,” said Music Director and Conductor Ming Luke, in his third year with the symphony.
The symphony enjoys “an outpouring of support” from the community it serves and the 12-member Symphony Association Board of Directors, Luke said.
The 76-member symphony comprises professional musicians from Las Cruces, El Paso and throughout the region “who have been part of the music scene for years,” he said, including professors and students from New Mexico State University along with world-class guest artists and conductors.
LCSO has recently added a youth orchestra and a junior orchestra, which provide students of all economic backgrounds with the opportunity to learn to play musical instruments and to perform in concert, including performances alongside LCSO. The orchestras are also an important pipeline for the symphony and its “very bright future,” Luke said.
The Junior Orchestra, for area middle school students, is conducted by Douglas Poff, director of El Paso’s Brown Middle School Orchestra and former director of two middle schools in Las Cruces. The Youth Orchestra, for high school students in the area, is directed by Michael Mapp, Ph.D., director of bands at NMSU.
The junior and youth orchestras “blow it out of the park” in the quality of their performances, said LCSO Interim Executive Director Carmen Rustenbeck.
LCSO members are outstanding professional musicians, Association Board President Michael Chang said, but they are also down-to-earth people who play music everyone can enjoy. It is perfectly appropriate to wear jeans to a symphony performance, Chang said. The important thing is to go.
Attending a LCSO performance “can move you,” he said. “It’s almost a spiritual experience. Just come one time – you’ll be hooked.”
LCSO has kept ticket prices down – even reducing the lowest ticket prices – “to be inclusive of our community,” Chang said.
The symphony was founded in 1958 when NMSU professor Oscar Butler “gathered Las Cruces resident-musicians to perform Brahms’s Requiem,” according to the LCSO website.
LCSO performs in Atkinson Recital Hall in the NMSU Music Building, 1075 N. Horseshoe St.
For individual performance and season tickets and more information, contact Rustenbeck at 575-646-3709 or executivedirector@lascrucessymphony.org. Visit LasCrucesSymphony.com and click on the “Join Us” link for more information on the youth and junior orchestras.
