This is Who We Are

The Windham Orchestra was born more than fifty years ago out of a radiant impulse: to make music together—students and neighbors, amateurs and professionals, side by side. From those early days at Windham College in the 1970s through decades of concerts with the Brattleboro Music Center, and now as an independent ensemble that impulse has never dimmed.

The qualities that sustain us, and that we undertake to provide from are: Love, Beauty, Acceptance, Service, and Listening. Love, because it is the greatest. Beauty can be experienced as an expression, an act of gifted and crafted love, and we say, necessary for life. Acceptance, because our doors and music stands are open to musicians of many backgrounds, levels, and stories. Service, because we desire to be useful, and we propose that music is never not a self-centered endeavor.

Over the decades, the orchestra has welcomed remarkable conductors and collaborators — from Emanuel Ax’s unforgettable Beethoven to Blanche Moyse’s Brahms to the important directorship of Zon Eastes, and since 2010, Hugh Keelan. Each chapter of our history has been shaped by the spirit of collaboration and the courage to keep evolving.

In 2025 we are particularly interested in our value of Listening — listening as a civic act: to hear what is new, what is needed, and what is possible. Listening, because to play in an orchestra is a pinnacle accomplishment in which we build sound by sharing our ears with skill and humility — and because Listening is our way of honoring our communities, to find out how we can further art, compassion, justice, and currently in 2025, activism.

Thus we step forward: not only with music, but with a resolve to shape the future by listening — listening as the ground of justice, the instrument of beauty, and the greatest act of love we can offer.