Fenimore Chamber Orchestra prepares August inaugural performance

Talk only for a few minutes with Thomas Wolf and one realizes this is a person who does nothing by half measure – even an idea in the middle of a global pandemic with two like-minded friends to found a chamber orchestra with a home base in Cooperstown.

After two years of the grunt work – filing as a corporation in New York, forming a 501(c)(3), gathering a board of directors, securing the funding needed to begin, and finding a suitable venue – the Fenimore Chamber Orchestra is preparing its inaugural concert at Christ Church in Cooperstown on August 27. Not just a culmination of logistical preparation, the concert is the beginning of what Mr. Wolf anticipates will be a resounding cultural success adding to the region’s artistic palette.

The trio brings international talent to the task: Mr. Wolf, himself an opera and concert performer in Europe and with 25 years in arts administration, serves as the chair of the orchestra’s governing board. His co-founders are Chief Operations Officer Rosemary Summers, for 25 years James Levine’s private librarian at the Metropolitan Opera, and Music Director Maciezj Zoltowski, a world-renowned conductor of many festival orchestras across Europe.

“The three of us had converged up here,” Mr. Wolf recalled. “Rosemary and I were talking on the phone a year ago February about what we could do now that we’re all here. We said at the same time, ‘we must found our own orchestra!”

“We identified a need and have answered that need for the community at large in presenting orchestral performances at the highest artistic and professional level,” he said. “We knew the pandemic would ease. Many arts institutions closed their doors and musicians lost their livelihood during the pandemic, and yet here we are founding our own chamber orchestra. People we’ve spoken to in Cooperstown say it would be a perfect idea.”