About the Urban Philharmonic

Since 1977 the music conductor, Music Director Darrold Hunt and a handful of volunteers have put together a compelling series of performances each season for 30 years.

Index

Mission >>
Our Conductor >>
History >>
Reviews in the Press >>

• The Baltimore Sun
• The Washington Post
• Weta Radio
• The Washington Star
• Ebony

Mission

The Urban Philharmonic Society, Inc. is a private non-profit music-presenting organization dedicated to providing musical excellence to the greater Washington Community. The Society is committed to taking music normally performed in major concert and recital halls out into several different ethnic communities in the area.

The Society also provides performance and employment opportunities for highly gifted ethnic minority, female and disabled musicians. The Society sponsors The Urban Philharmonic Orchestra, The Urban Philharmonic Recitals, The Urban Philharmonic "POPS", Sound All 'Round and The Paul Robeson Vocal Competition.
Through these programs the Society makes a continuous commitment to:

• Bring each audience works rooted in its own subculture interwoven with works from standard orchestral literature.
• Offer the gifted, professional musician a platform where there is encouragement, recognition, exposure and a chance for continued artistic development.
• Develop and implement educational programs for the Community

Our Conductor

Our Founder/Music Director is a graduate in conducting of the Juilliard School of Music. Maestro Hunt served for four years as Assistant Conductor of the Baltimore Symphony and three years as the conductor/music director of the Conservatory Orchestra at the Brooklyn College School of Performing Arts. He has been guest conductor of the National Symphony, The Detroit Symphony, The Pensacola Symphony and many others.

Not just the music director, he is in essence the executive director. For 30 years he has been at the center of the Urban Philharmonic Society, initiating and shaping the programs that get the music out to the communities.

History

Since its founding in 1970 the Urban Philharmonic Society has proven to be one of the most exciting new ventures in the symphonic field. After graduating the Juilliard School, Maestro Hunt embarked on creating a musical institution which had as its primary commitment the presentation of programs of musical excellence to those areas of the urban community which for social and/or political reasons have not enjoyed live professional orchestral concerts as a part of their lives.

The idea was exciting enough for luminaries such as Leonard Bernstein and the Juilliard String Quartet to become immediately involved. Maestro Bernstein became a Sponsor, remaining so until his death and The Juilliard String Quartet by performing a benefit concert at Town Hall for the Society and many years later another benefit concert, but this time at the Kennedy Center.

Concerts were presented throughout the early 70s especially in Harlem featuring pianist Santiago Rodriquez and at Town Hall pianists Zenaida Manfugas or Pedro Rojas in his New York debut. These many concerts were organized and run by now published poet Drew McCord Stroud.

In 1977, after hearing the Urban Philharmonic Orchestra perform at the Lyric Theatre in Baltimore, Md. Larry Neal, who was at that time the executive director of the D.C. Commission on the Arts and the Humanities invited Maestro Hunt to bring the Society and its developing programs to the District of Columbia.

Since that time we have been proud to share concerts through all of our programs which have earned only the very highest reviews from the Washington Post throughout all of Washington.

Having performed with artists such as Pete Seeger or George Shirley or Julius Hemphil we have succeeded and look forward to our continuing growth because there is no joy like the joy of bringing that wonderful musical celebration of souls dancing together-- back home.

Reviews in the Press

• THE BALTIMORE SUN

"Mr. Hunt, a conductor of restraint who shapes the air as a sculptor shapes his marble, coaxed the maximum out of the Baltimore Symphony and the evening emerged as an intense musical experience."
-- David Kearse, THE BALTIMORE SUN

• THE WASHINGTON POST

"Conducted by Darrold Hunt, the music (had) a classic poise without distracting from a special air of spontaneity--almost as though the symphony were happening for the first time. There was a graceful precision in the rapport between soloist and orchestra, a shared sense of the serious playfulness that Beethoven put into his music, and a technical polish that was the highlight of the concert"
---Joseph McLellan, THE WASHINGTON POST

"The orchestra demonstrated a highly professional ensemble with strings that often turned silken, some polished resounding horn playing, and a fine first flute. Hunt led his players throughout the afternoon with solid musicianly taste, animated by a fine vitality and a keen feeling for the lyric line."
--Paul Hume, THE WASHINGTON POST

"Hunt's forceful moves proved both visually and aurally pleasing."

--Marion Jacobson, THE WASHINGTON POST

"It wasn't so much a concert as a celebration that Darrold Hunt presided over at the Metropolitan AME Church last night. Peter Seeger joined Hunt and his excellent Urban Philharmonic Orchestra in an eclectic program of music honoring the first national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. and from the opening singing of the national anthem and then of "We Shall Overcome", it was clear that this would be a love-fest."
--Joan Reithaler, THE WASHINGTON POST

"Beethoven's Seventh Symphony sprang from the baton of Darrold Hunt yesterday afternoon as fresh and new as it must have been at its first performance 172 years ago. The music's rhythmic vitality, its unbridled joy and deep solemnity were conveyed by the Urban Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance that crackled with pure electricity"

-- Joseph McLellan, THE WASHINGTON POST

"Conductor Darrold Hunt has hit a seam of gold with the Urban Philharmonic Orchestra. He has an ensemble that plays splendidly together and that ekes beauty out of the familiar...Mozart's divertimento No. 7 was a dollop of ice cream on a warm spring night-- a gentle confection from first note to last. The other Mozart work, Symphony No. 38, "Prague", was equally satisfying.'
--Mark Carrington, THE WASHINGTON POST

• WETA RADIO

"Last weekend I had an experience that I do not have nearly often enough. I went to an orchestral concert that was more than a performance, (it was)a communication. ...The Urban Philharmonic, conducted by Darrold Hunt, communicated Beethoven...to me in the Metropolitan African Methodist Episcopal Church...I will remember that Urban Philharmonic concert for years"
-- Jospeh McLellan, WETA RADIO

• THE WASHINGTON STAR

"If you were to use excellence as the yardstick of success, The Urban Philharmonic had a most successful debut. It is hoped that the orchestra will indeed succeed in finding a welcome and home here; it would be an adornment to the cultural life of any city in the country...The concert by the Urban Philharmonic under the direction of its founder, Darrold Hunt...may turn out to be a significant event in the history of music in the Nation's Capital"

-- Irving Lowens, THE WASHINGTON STAR

• EBONY

“Hunt receives no salary but says his mission of bringing classical music into the projects, parks, and playgrounds of the inner city, is far more important.”