How It All Started

The Abi­lene Phil­har­monic is one of Abilene’s old­est per­form­ing arts orga­ni­za­tions, enrich­ing the cul­tural life of the “Big Coun­try” in West Cen­tral Texas. The Philharmonic’s his­tory traces back to its incor­po­ra­tion in Sep­tem­ber 1950, when com­mu­nity sup­port­ers orga­nized a musi­cal group called the Abi­lene Sym­phony Orches­tra. The con­certs were held in the old Abi­lene High School, now Lin­coln Mid­dle School.  The Abi­lene Phil­har­monic has an affil­i­ated 150-member vol­un­teer non­profit, the Abi­lene Phil­har­monic Guild, as well as a sep­a­rate non­profit endow­ment board, the Abi­lene Phil­har­monic Foundation.

We pro­vide oppor­tu­ni­ties for the pub­lic to enjoy excel­lence in sym­phonic per­for­mances by offer­ing musi­cal diver­sity and inno­v­a­tive edu­ca­tional pro­grams in order to enrich the qual­ity of life in our community.

In its 61st year, the Abi­lene Phil­har­monic is led by Music Direc­tor and Con­duc­tor David Itkin and is the only pro­fes­sional orches­tra within 100 miles of Abi­lene, draw­ing audi­ences from more than 50 Texas cities.  The Philharmonic’s first pro­gram was pre­sented on Decem­ber 2, 1950, and youth con­certs were intro­duced to Abi­lene stu­dents dur­ing the 1955–56 Season.

Our 70+ pro­fes­sional musi­cians and world class music director/conductor strive to pro­vide the Abi­lene com­mu­nity with incred­i­ble orches­tral per­for­mances.  The 2007-08 Sea­son was arguably the best in our five-decade long his­tory. We reached sell­out capac­ity with sev­eral per­for­mances and the demand for tick­ets to our Christ­mas per­for­mance was so strong, we added a matinee.

The 2008-09 Sea­son con­tin­ued build­ing this extra­or­di­nary momen­tum by show­cas­ing a diverse group of guest artists from around the world.  The demand for tick­ets con­tin­ued as seen by our increase in sin­gle ticket sales, and our Christ­mas Mati­nee atten­dance attracted 2.5 times the audi­ence from 2007-08 performance.

The 2009-10 Sea­son was high­lighted by a seven orches­tra Co-Commission Pre­miere of “Ansel Adams: Amer­ica” by Dave and Chris Brubeck, the first in the his­tory of the Phil­har­monic.  The pre­miere served as the cen­tral fix­ture of an arts col­lab­o­ra­tion effort to com­bine events and activ­i­ties with a local museum, a con­tem­po­rary gallery, a uni­ver­sity hon­ors col­lege and music depart­ment, and an under­served youth group.

This ini­tia­tive was two years in the mak­ing and set the course for a new Abi­lene Cul­tural Dis­trict for­ma­tion through Abi­lene Cul­tural Affairs Coun­cil.  A major ben­e­fit of this event and col­lab­o­ra­tion was the oppor­tu­nity for cross-marketing into other audi­ence demo­graph­ics due to the var­i­ous art forms pre­sented.  This com­po­nent includes the pop­u­la­tion that trav­els specif­i­cally to West Texas for tourism events, which gen­er­ates $374 mil­lion annu­ally in Abilene.

Our con­cert sea­son con­sists of four Clas­si­cal con­certs and three Pops con­certs, one mati­nee, one ben­e­fit con­cert and four Dis­cover Music Edu­ca­tion con­certs.  We also offer numer­ous edu­ca­tion pro­grams con­sist­ing of Guest Artist mas­ter classes, Tick­e­tReach free ticket pro­gram, Young Artist Schol­ar­ship Com­pe­ti­tion, Con­cert Con­ver­sa­tions prior to con­certs and the Conductor’s Notes and Artist Spot­light radio pro­grams.  Over 22,000 peo­ple are served annu­ally through our con­certs and edu­ca­tion pro­grams.