About MITSPO

The MIT Summer Philharmonic Orchestra (MITSPO) triumphantly ascends the stage for its 25th anniversary season. MITSPO has been the preeminent summer community orchestra for over two decades.  Made up of top musicians of the MIT community and the Greater Boston area, MITSPO hosts a single concert event every summer. In 2009, MITSPO was invited to participate in the Landmarks Festival at the Shell series and make its debut at the Hatch Shell at the Boston Esplanade.   

MITSPO is proud to be sponsored by MIT Professional Education.

MITSPO is conducted by George Ogata who founded the orchestra in 1995.  From 1996 to 2013, Mr. Ogata was on the faculty at the Longy School of Music of Bard College as Conductor of the Longy Youth Chamber Orchestra, where he led the senior youth orchestra program for seventeen years.  He took the youth orchestra on tour to Austria, Canada, Czech Republic, Finland, France, and Spain.  For 2 years, Mr. Ogata joined the faculty of the Powers Music School as the Conductor of the Senior Orchestra of the Massachusetts Youth Symphony Project (MYSP), which he founded in 2013.

In 2014, George Ogata became the 7th Music Director and Conductor of the Reading Symphony Orchestra (RSO) based in Reading, Massachusetts.

Masterworks performed by MITSPO in the past include:

• Beethoven, Concerto for Violin and Orchestra (Susanna Ogata, Violin)

• Beethoven, Symphony No. 3, "Eroica"

• Beethoven, Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”

• Berlioz, Symphonie fantastique

• Borodin, Symphony No. 2

• Brahms, Symphony No. 1

• Brahms, Symphony No. 2

• Brahms, Symphony No. 4

• Bruckner, Symphony No. 6

• Dvorak, Symphony No. 7

• Dvorak, Symphony No. 8

• Dvorak, Symphony No. 9, "From the New World"

• Dvorak, Wood Dove

• Gandolfi, Impressions from “The Garden of Cosmic Speculation”

• Ginastera, Estancia Suite

• Liszt, A Faust Symphony

• Liszt, Mazeppa

• Mahler, Symphony No. 1

• Mahler, Symphony No. 5

• Mahler, Symphony No. 9

• Márquez, Danzón No. 2

• Rachmaninov, Isle of the Dead

• Rachmaninov, Symphony No. 2

• Respighi, Pines of Rome

• Rimsky-Korsakov, Capriccio Espagnol

• Rimsky-Korsakov, Scheherazade

• Saint-Saens, Symphony No. 3, "Organ"

• Schubert, Symphony No. 7 (8), "Unfinished"

• Schumann, Symphony No. 4

• Scriabin, Poem of Ecstasy

• Sibelius, Finlandia

• Sibelius, Symphony No. 1

• Sibelius, Symphony No. 2

• Smetana, The Moldau

• Strauss, Also sprach Zarathustra

• Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring

• Tchaikovsky, Capriccio Italien

• Tchaikovsky, Francesca da Rimini

• Tchaikovsky, Manfred Symphony

• Tchaikovsky, Romeo and Juliet Overture-Fantasy

• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 4

• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 5

• Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6, “Pathetique”