Princeton High School Orchestra (USA): Concert for Unicef

Honored as a United States Fund for UNICEF Ambassador for its UNICEF Benefit Concert produced in 2007, the Princeton High School Orchestra enjoys being both a musically sensitive and socially proactive ensemble in the USA and abroad. The orchestra has been invited, on several occasions, to perform during the New Jersey Governor’s Convocation for Excellence in Teaching. While in Scotland in 2002, the orchestra teamed up with a Dunfermline community music organization to raise funds for the victims of the Chernobyl disaster. In 2007, Philadelphia Orchestra violinist Paul Roby and Princeton composer Ira Mowitz collaborated with the orchestra in a concert to raise lifesaving funds for children around the world through the UNICEF organization. In a concert organized by UNICEF Agentina in 2012, the orchestra performed for the medical staff and patients at the Ramon Sarda Maternity Hospital of Buenos Aires.

Touring is an important part of music director Robert Loughran’s overall vision for the Princeton High School Orchestra. He believes that, in addition to broadening their educational horizons, touring gives his orchestral students a sense of perspective as they face the multitude of challenges that today’s world presents.

Since 1996, the orchestra has embarked on eleven international tours that have taken the musicians to England, Scotland, Italy, France, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, China and Argentina. Their performance locations have included England’s Gloucester Cathedral, St. Giles Cathedral of Edinburgh, Chiesa del Redentore of Venice, the Kursaal of Bad Gastein, Chiesa di Provenzano of Siena, the Church of St. Filippo & Giacomo of Cortina díAmpezzo, the Kursaal of Bad Woerishofen, Geneva’s Auditoire de Calvin, the Klosterkirche of Engelberg, Megève’s Eglise Saint Jean Baptiste, the Conservatoire de Musique, Danse et Théâtre du Grand Avignon, the Qingdao International School of Shandong, the Shanghai Community International School, the Villa Ocampo and Plaza Francia of Buenos Aires, the Eglise de Verbier, Paris’ Eglise de la Madeleine, the World International Property Organization Headquarters in Geneva, and Brussels’ Palais des Beaux-Arts.