Most folks can't wait for Friday's to get out of their day jobs and do something else. But for the musicians and music lovers of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, music is a way of life, and you'll find them gathered together every Friday night reading through symphony orchestra works just for fun.
On a cold Friday night in winter, associate producer Allison Pokras and I visited Presser Hall on the campus of Temple University to sit in on one of the weekly reading sessions of the Orchestra Society of Philadelphia, one of the oldest community orchestras of its kind in the USA. The Orchestra Society of Philadelphia was founded in 1964 by Morris Goldman and Sidney Rothstein as a place where professional musicians, teachers, students and a wide variety of folks with varying "day jobs" could get together to read through various symphonic orchestral music under the baton of a rotating roster of conductors.