History

The South Melbourne Symphony Orchestra is one of the 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 commitee of its members.

Four concerts a year are performed in the South Melbourne Town Hall (see below), with about ten rehearsals for each concert.

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 Univerity 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 music 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 single and multiple pianos and 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 twentyfirst centuries.

We are looking forward to our concerts this year, further on to our 80th anniversary in 2026 and to continue to perform for the community for many more years.