The Bronx Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal. Its members include professional musicians and amateurs.
Bronx Symphony Orchestra: Beethoven on a Budget
The music started in an adult education class not long after World War II, with veterans and survivors seeking to lose themselves in Mozart and Beethoven.
Sixty years later, the Bronx Symphony Orchestra is still performing, its chairs filled by professional musicians who supplement a core of amateurs. Together, they play classical music for a dwindling audience in a borough more noted for its rap and reggaetón than its Rossini and Rimsky-Korsakov.








