Tanglewood Festival Chorus performing in Boston, New York and Tanglewood. In 1970, John Oliver proposed to the management of the Boston Symphony Orchestra that he would create a permanent chorus for the orchestra, which had relied on various area choruses for much of its history. In Oliver's words, "To my utter amazement now--I wasn't amazed then, because I was just a brash young man--they said, 'Go! Form a chorus.'" The TFC's first concert was a performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at Symphony Hall in April 1970 when Leonard Bernstein substituted for William Steinberg who had fallen ill. Bernstein had been engaged to conduct
Portland Symphony Orchestra are all essential to its success. In 1952, the concertmaster and associate conductor of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, Richard Burgin, became the PSO's conductor. His legacy is that he helped improve the string section. Rouben Gregorian took over in 1958, after Burgin's administration ended. He was a graduate at Central College in Iran. He was the co-founder and past conductor of the Tehran Symphony Orchestra. As the main conductor of the Portland Symphony Orchestra, he finalized the enactment of a fully paid orchestra in 1959. In 1962, Arthur Bennett Lipkin began his tenure. He was the first resident conductor and