New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra plays Beethoven's Ninth

The New Amsterdam Symphony Orchestra (NASO) welcomes back Matthew Oberstein to conduct Beethoven’s glorious Ninth Symphony for its 50th-anniversary season opener! NASO will partner with the West Village Chorale, led by Artistic Director Colin Britt.

Founded in 1976 by six musicians, NASO has grown to include over 75 players who are a combination of professional, semi-professional, and accomplished avocational players. The primary goal of NASO is to seek out and showcase outstanding musicians and provide them with the much-coveted opportunity to perform with a symphony orchestra in New York City.

Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, which premiered 201 years ago, is “unquestionably the greatest of all symphonies,” according to Frederick Stock, the Chicago Symphony Orchestra‘s second music director. He regarded the Ninth, one of the first choral symphonies, as “the final résumé of all of Beethoven’s achievements,” writing that “it voices the message of one who had risen beyond himself, beyond the world and the time in which he lived.” Stock viewed the Ninth as “embracing all phases of human emotion, monumental in scope and outline, [and] colossal in its intellectual grasp and emotional eloquence.”

Oberstein has previously conducted some of NASO’s most ambitious and popular concerts, including those featuring Brahms’ German Requiem, Copland’s Lincoln Portrait (with B.D. Wong as narrator), Gershwin’s American in Paris, and movie music from Star Wars, Star Trek, Lord of the Rings, and E.T. He served as music director and conductor with the Philharmonic of Southern New Jersey from May 2012 to May 2023, and he has also held artistic and production management positions with the Westchester Philharmonic and Purchase Symphony Orchestra. A seasoned professional in the performing arts industry, he currently serves as senior vice president at Opus 3 Artists.

Founded in 1971, the West Village Chorale is an avocational ensemble based out of Judson Memorial Church. Now in his eighth season as the Chorale’s artistic director and conductor, Colin Britt also serves as director of choral activities at Mount Holyoke College.