Symphony d'Oro Rancho Cordova offers 4 to 5 classical or pops concerts each year (most are free) to Rancho Cordova and surrounding communities. The Symphony also sponsors local soloists and composers, as well as chamber ensembles featuring symphony members who perform at community events.
The Symphony's inaugural concert in 2013 at the Rancho Cordova City Hall showed the community was eager for more local orchestral concerts. Since Rancho Cordova did not have a performing arts center, the Symphony's initial concerts were held at a local church, where we filled the seats. Later the Symphony began a series of very popular concerts in the food court of local supermarket KP International. And what fun everyone had, pioneering the crazy notion that musicians and the audience would enjoy a classical concert in a food court!
The Symphony has played at many other locations such as the California Aerospace Museum and the California Railroad Museum. A winery? Why not? Under the Capitol Dome - of course! When the Cordova High School Performing Arts Theater opened its doors, Symphony d'Oro was the first community organization to take the stage and a full house. And during the pandemic the Symphony hosted a series of online music lectures hosted by our conductor during Spring/Summer 2020, as well as a series of professionally recorded virtual concerts: holiday concerts in 2020 & 2021, a virtual episode of our popular Poperetta! series (one-part symphony and one part drag queen show!), as well as a Mozart Madness concert in Fall 2021.
Symphony d'Oro also has commissioned local composers to write original music. Local composer Derek Sup composed and performed with the Symphony a full piano concerto, dedicated to a Gold River piano teacher who touched many in our community before her life came to an end way too early. Ryan Sulieman wrote a piece focused upon the destruction of fires like the Camp Fire (Burning).
The Symphony is led by our creative and fun-loving musical director and conductor Pete Nowlen. A trip to one of our Symphony concerts is not only a harmonious journey--it is a musical education, with the charming conductor teaching the course. For some orchestras you might pay hundreds of dollars each year to soak this all in, but with the exception of one fund-raising concert per year, you experience it all for free because the 60 musicians are all volunteers - doing what they do best to enlighten and enliven the lives of all of us.