In September 1966, Belfast gained a permanent professional orchestra with an unusual founding ambition: to bring live orchestral music to towns and schools across Northern Ireland. The Ulster Orchestra began with 38 players. Its first season was busy from the start, and its 60th anniversary offers a chance to hear the story behind that beginning.
Why create a new orchestra in 1966?
Orchestral music was already part of Belfast life. The BBC had assembled a regional orchestra in the 1920s, and visiting ensembles played to large audiences after the Second World War. The City of Belfast Orchestra, established in 1950, was a part-time municipal group that also drew on BBC musicians. When those players were offered full-time BBC contracts in 1965, the city orchestra could no longer rely on them in the same way.
Leaders at the Arts Council of Northern Ireland wanted a full-time ensemble able to play beyond Belfast and perform for schools. A larger government grant to the Council helped make that possible. Maurice Miles, who had conducted the City of Belfast Orchestra and long argued for a permanent group, became the Ulster Orchestra’s first principal conductor. The new organisation built on an existing musical culture while giving its players a stable professional home.
Meet the founding players
The 38 musicians came from Northern Ireland, the Republic of Ireland, England and farther afield, including Hungary, France, Germany, Sri Lanka and the West Indies. Their average age was 25, according to the orchestra’s history. János Fürst led the players. It was a young, international ensemble learning to work together while preparing an ambitious schedule.
The orchestra dates its formation to September 1966. Some anniversary calendars specify September 28; the orchestra’s own history records the month without identifying one exact founding day. Its first major Ulster Hall concert was on Friday, October 21.
An October debut and a demanding first season
That Belfast concert paired Wagner’s Siegfried Idyll with Schubert’s Sixth Symphony. Pianist John Ogdon joined the orchestra for Beethoven’s Third Piano Concerto. The programme showed the range expected of a new professional group, but the Ulster Hall was only one part of its job.
The players travelled to lunchtime and evening concerts in towns across the region. The orchestra records 66 concerts between September and December 1966. Twenty school concerts were scheduled in September and October alone, and roughly 12,000 schoolchildren attended its performances during 1966. A founder later recalled Miles explaining an orchestra to pupils through the familiar idea of a football team, drawing them into the different roles played by musicians.
Musicians who taught as well as performed
Belfast also founded the Ulster College of Music in 1966. It was a separate institution, created by music educator Daphne Bell, but several of the orchestra’s players became its first tutors. Fürst taught there alongside musicians including principal violist Brian Mack and principal cellist Maurice Meulien. Their work linked the new professional ensemble with students learning instruments and playing in smaller groups.
How did the orchestra grow?
The organisation changed with the music it wanted to play. An independent Ulster Orchestra Society was established in 1980. In May 1981, 18 musicians from the recently disbanded BBC Northern Ireland Orchestra joined an expanded Ulster Orchestra of 55 players. Additional brass, percussion, harp and strings made larger orchestral works possible. Regional performances continued, including concerts in Ballymena, Newry and Derry during the 1981–82 season.
For its 60th anniversary season, the orchestra lists a September 25, 2026 opening at the Ulster Hall, conducted by Anna Handler. The programme includes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony with choirs from across Northern Ireland. That combination of professional musicians and young local voices is a fitting way to revisit the ensemble’s original goal of taking music into the wider community.
For readers exploring their own Irish family story, our Irish gifts collection lets you browse by family name. The orchestra is one of many cultural histories that have shaped life across the island.