The South Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is one of Melbourne's oldest community orchestras, with a continuous record of performing in the South Melbourne Town Hall since its formation in 1946. It is an amateur orchestra, managed by a committee of its members.

Four concerts a year are performed in the South Melbourne Town Hall (usually), with about ten rehearsals for each concert. Through the generosity of the City of Port Phillip and the Australian National Academy of Music, the orchestra had the use for both rehearsals and concerts of the Hall which has outstanding acoustic properties. Since the end of 2019 the Hall has been closed by the City of Port Phillip while assessment for remedial engineering works is carried out, which will be followed by an extensive refurbishment and - we hope - our return.

The present Conductor is Lynette Bridgland, who completed her Bachelor of Education in Music at Victoria College in 1982, and a post-graduate diploma in conducting at the University of Surrey in 1990. From 1992-2003 she was Director of Music at Fintona Girls School and has a great deal of experience in conducting orchestras, bands, choirs and musical theatre productions. She is currently teaching at Our Lady of Sion College.

The orchestra is proud to have collaborated with many outstanding soloists drawn from its own ranks, the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Australian National Academy of Music and the wider Australian musical world. In 2012 we were very fortunate to collaborate with two outstanding Australian musicians Paul Dean and Brett Dean, who performed the Max Bruch concerto for Clarinet and Viola with us.

Concertos have been performed with instruments from all four orchestral families - strings, woodwind, brass and percussion and have ranged from the Baroque era, through the Classical and Romantic periods and into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

After the pandemic disruptions of 2020 and 2021, we were delighted to return to performing in 2022! Due to the ongoing closure of the South Melbourne Town Hall for remediation and reconfiguration works, we are performing at St Stephen's Anglican Church in Richmond - a lovely acoustic venue and we are very grateful to the Church for giving us this opportunity. We are very much looking forward to our concerts this year and continuing to perform for the community for many more years.