About Us We seek to educate, entertain, inspire, engage and enrich our community through orchestral music and other musical performances of the highest quality.

The Salisbury Symphony Orchestra is a professional symphony orchestra home-based in Salisbury, North Carolina.

The Salisbury Symphony Orchestra consists of forty-five to ninety musicians that perform five to seven concerts annually, typically in Keppel Auditorium on the Catawba College campus or Varick Auditorium on the Livingstone College campus.

We perform a large variety of repertoire from early classical works to recent pops selections, often with guest soloists and performers of note from all over the world. The Orchestra’s season finishes in June each year with the annual “Pops at the Post” celebration, a free, outdoor event held in downtown Salisbury near the Salisbury Post office building and co-sponsored by the Post, an event which brings more than a thousand visitors to Salisbury each year.

The Symphony also sponsors music-related educational programs, small group instruction and summer camps for local school-age children.

A Symphony Orchestra like no other—52 years in the making.

It is relatively rare for a municipality to host it's very own professional symphony orchestra, and rarer still that the hosting city is as small as Salisbury. But it is even less common to find such an orchestra which has existed continuously for over 52 years, and yet that is exactly what our community has in the Salisbury Symphony!

Founding - 1960s

It is relatively rare for a municipality to host its very own professional symphony orchestra, and rarer still that the hosting city is as small as Salisbury. But it is even less common to find such an orchestra which has existed continuously for over 52 years, and yet that is exactly what our community has in the Salisbury Symphony!

The idea of having a symphony orchestra here in Salisbury, North Carolina was first conceived by Dr. Samuel E. Duncan, the fifth president of Livingstone College in the early sixties. In the spring of 1966, he invited Dr. Donald C. Dearborn, then president of Catawba College, to collaborate with him to establish a community symphony. Together with the Salisbury City School System, the two colleges jointly hired Albert Chaffoo to organize the area's first symphony orchestra and to teach college and high school classes in music. Chaffoo, an Iranian- born college professor, had previously helped to create the Baghdad Symphony Orchestra - Iraq's first symphony orchestra - and later conducted the Birmingham and Bournemouth Orchestras in London. Accepting a teaching position which brought him to the United States, he later directed the Asheville Symphony and was the founding Music Director for the Western Piedmont Symphony Orchestra (Hickory, NC) before coming to Salisbury.

The fledgling Salisbury Symphony Orchestra's first concert took place on November 6, 1967, in Keppel Auditorium of Catawba College. Professor Chaffoo continued to serve for fifteen years as a music educator for the community as well as the music director and conductor of the orchestra.

Dr. Samuel E. Duncan

Dr. Donald C. Dearborn

Albert Chaffoo

1970’s: Merger and the creation of the Symphony Guild

In 1972 the board of the Salisbury Symphony and the local board of the North Carolina Symphony merged to become the Salisbury-Rowan Symphony Society, and formally incorporated on March 2, 1973. The new board pledged to continue the longstanding tradition of sponsoring an annual "Education Concert" performance by the North Carolina Symphony expressly for school children in conjunction with the five-concert season of the Salisbury Symphony.

The Salisbury-Rowan Symphony Guild was created in support of the Symphony in 1977, and since then has raised substantial funds and has rendered invaluable service to the board, the orchestra, and the entire community.

20th century

Dr. Douglas Meyer succeeded Professor Chaffoo as music director and conductor in 1982, serving until mid-1984. Previously serving as Conductor of the Orchestras at Luther College in Iowa, Mr. Meyer challenged the community and the orchestra by leading the orchestra in its first performance of a Mahler symphony, the fourth. He is credited with steering the Salisbury Symphony in a professional direction and persuaded the Board to hire the first business manager.

The following season the board engaged Dr. Richard Fiske, a faculty member at the North Carolina School of the Arts, as music director and conductor. Dr. Fiske continued to refine the musical quality of the orchestra and to expand its repertoire. Following Dr. Fiske's departure in 1987, the Board of Directors utilized guest conductors for the 1987-88 season while they conducted a national search for the next Music Director. Their search produced a contract with David Hagy in the summer of 1988 who served as the Music Director of the Salisbury Symphony until June 30, 2023, when he became Music Director Emeritus, and he still occasionally returns to Salisbury as a guest conductor

The 2023-24 Season brought more changes as five different guest conductors were brought in as potential candidates for the Symphony’ s Music Director position. From the slate of five excellent candidates a new Music Director, Mr. Daniel Wiley, was chosen, to start with the 2024-25 Concert Season.

Dr. Douglas Meyer

Dr. Richard Fiske

David Hagy

Music Director Daniel Wiley

Daniel Wiley is quickly becoming a notable young conductor on the rise, having made guest appearances with the Denali Chamber Orchestra, Meridian Symphony, Equilibrium Ensemble, Boise Philharmonic, Abilene Philharmonic, London Symphonia, Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Windsor Abridged Opera, University of Windsor’s Wind Ensemble, University of North Florida’s Opera Department, and the Cincinnati Ballet.

In the fall of 2022, Daniel joined the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra and Pops as an Assistant Conductor, where he is responsible for conducting and covering a wide variety of concerts as well as working with the Cincinnati Symphony Youth Orchestras.

Prior to his tenure in Cincinnati, Daniel has held numerous conducting posts including: Assistant Conductor of the Jacksonville Symphony, Music Director of the Jacksonville Symphony Youth Orchestras, Associate Conductor of the Windsor Symphony Orchestra, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Youth Orchestras, Music Director of the Windsor Symphony Community Orchestra, Wind Ensemble Conductor at the School of Creative Arts at the University of Windsor, Education Conductor/Consultant for London Symphonia, Conductor for the Windsor Abridged Opera Company, Music Director of Texas Academy of Mathematics and Science Youth Orchestra, and Assistant Conductor for the Meridian Symphony Orchestra.

During the pandemic, Daniel was instrumental in expanding the Windsor Symphony’s educational footprint, by creating a digital education concert series which includes 12 hours of interactive music curriculum for schools. Lauded as “an exemplar of impassioned and outstanding pedagogy” (Dr. Ken Montgomery, Dean of the Faculty Education, University of Windsor) and recognized in the Ontario Provincial Parliament as an example of how an orchestra can change lives through music even during a time of unprecedented uncertainty, this program to date has served over 123,000 students across the United States and Canada.

In 2019 Daniel was the second prize recipient of both the Smoky Mountain International Conducting Institute and Competition and the Los Angeles International Conducting Competition. Daniel has also spent time conducting new music ensembles, including the Musicbed Music and Film Corporation based in Fort Worth Texas, as well as participating in the Composing in the Wilderness program as part of the Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival in Fairbanks, Alaska. With this program, Daniel has conducted numerous premieres in Denali National Park.

As a former public school music teacher, Daniel has a unique passion for music education, and frequently donates his time as a guest clinician to support students and teachers in music programs across North America.