Chattanooga Symphony and Opera Association

We acknowledge that traditional symphony orchestras are based on European-centric cultural norms. At the Chattanooga Symphony & Opera, we believe diversity drives creativity and excellence. We are building an inclusive organization to create experiences that honor the many cultural and historical threads representing our larger American experience.

We hope to diversify our audiences, our guest artists, our board, and those we serve to make the CSO more reflective of our community as a whole. We hope to have a larger reach into more communities surrounding Hamilton County with performance and education opportunities.

We are making conscious efforts to consider and hire more artists of color. We want to expand our education programs into underserved communities, such as rural locations. We want to ensure that our programming is attractive to a variety of audiences. The CSO works to eliminate accessibility barriers by providing sensory maps, social narratives, accessible maps, and more at all concerts, in addition to presenting a Sensory Friendly series designed for disabled music lovers of all ages.

We have a strong board of directors and a dedicated administrative staff, creative and passionate musicians who assist in program development, and communities that are heavily involved in championing the arts.

As the only professional orchestra within a 100-mile radius, we’re committed to making our programs available to the broadest scope possible and bringing music education to a wider pool in unique ways. United Sound is a nationwide organization that addresses root causes of underrepresentation of BIPOC, female, and neurodivergent populations in professional music. The CSO has been selected as a partner in the Composer Project, which mentors emerging composers from underrepresented backgrounds and commissions compositions for music education purposes. Composers and mentors will come to Chattanooga to hear the CSO play their pieces and get valuable feedback that can only come with a professional, live performance of new compositions. The CSO will record these compositions for the emerging composers, and the pieces will eventually be used in music education settings. The CSO has shared faculty and talent with the Sewanee Summer Music Festival since 1957, and Executive Director Kilkenny also serves as the Festival’s Artistic and Executive Director. As such, we are thrilled to deepen our partnership, with CSO musicians joining OperaFest Sewanee singers on aria showcases. The Youth Symphony annually awards one member a full scholarship to attend Sewanee, offering a life changing artistic experience for a pre-college musician. Our Family Concert series enters its second year, partnering with the City of Chattanooga to provide free admission, and with puppetry organization Playful Evolving Monsters to create innovative visual components that complement musical elements onstage. These performances promote early literacy by bringing books to life through music and puppetry in partnership with the Hamilton County literacy initiative Read20. Family Concerts are brought to populations where they are needed most as determined by literacy and arts data available through Read20 and ArtsBuild.