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It’s The Discovery Orchestra’s 2025-26 Season! And in keeping with the 250^th Anniversary of the founding of our country, our focus will be on American composers—at least one of whom will be very familiar to you. Others will undoubtedly provide you with new musical discoveries!

We’re very excited about featuring George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue next Junein our customary Discovery Concert™ format with the full Discovery Orchestra on stage. You, the audience, will discover for yourselves—with the help of our interactive Listening Guide and my usual banter—exciting and moving aspects of this music that may have previously escaped your attention. 2024 marked the 100^th anniversary of the premiere of this dazzling, iconic work. And it sounds as fresh as ever!

New Jersey organist and composer Dr. Mark Miller and other local composers will be featured in January—including choral works—a genre not usually featured in our programming. This concert, in Summit, will provide you with the opportunity to enjoy listening to musical selections you likely have never before encountered. Joining Mark will be members of the highly regarded Harmonium Choral Society under the direction of Dr. Anne Matlack. Don’t miss it!

Dr. Min Kwon, Head of the Piano Faculty at Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University, has given us all a gift for the upcoming 250^th Anniversary year. Dr. Kwon commissioned a diverse group of more than 70 of today’s leading American composers to each compose a variation on America, the Beautiful—the song written in 1893 by Samuel A. Ward, organist and choirmaster at Grace Episcopal Church in Newark, with lyrics by author and poet Katharine Lee Bates. Dr. Kwon indicated that her “hope is to paint a sonic picture of her adopted country … and ultimately try to find the beauty at the core of the American experiment and its credo of e pluribus unum—out of many, one.” Min has already recorded all of these variations. Two of these variations will be the subject of two different episodes of Inside Music in 2026 on 89.1 WWFM The Classical Network. Stay tuned!

Could we really present a season of American composers without including Aaron Copland? In multifaceted collaboration with Social Impact Studios, we will present Music for the People at the Historic Kellogg Mansion in Morristown on Saturday, October 18^th. This will be an event for the whole family as we celebrate the 90^th Anniversary of an American musical legacy from the Works Progress Administration’s (WPA) Federal Music Project of the 1930’s. Throughout the afternoon beginning at 1:00pm—in addition to providing light edibles and soft drinks—the day will include opportunities to view an exhibition of Federal Music Project posters and to participate in hands-on screen printing of your very own poster.

Those of you who know me personally know that I’m a hat guy. I love hats and have a collection. Both my grandfather Howard Jordan and my dad Frederick Maull sported felt hats frequently. How could I not like hats? So how could I not want to feature an American composer this season who frequently wore hats? An unusual combination of businessman, actuary, and composer, Charles Ives was a man after my own heart … at last regarding headwear! He wrote his Variations on “America” (think: My Country ‘Tis of Thee) at the tender age of seventeen. Below is a photo of him eight years later when he graduated from Yale. Originally written for pipe organ—Ives was a professional church organist—the Variations were later arranged for band and symphony orchestra by two other composers.