Two years ago, The Millvale Festival Orchestra was formed to bring classical music to the Millvale Music Festival. We are dedicated to crafting exciting and relevant programs, and presenting them free of charge at the Millvale Music Festival, one of the cities premiere music festivals. We hope to broaden the audience for classical music ,while delivering engaging programs that celebrate contemporary music, as well as the tradition that grounds it. Your donations will enable this mission, covering the payment of musicians, music rentals, and other administrative costs. 

The MFO was founded by Jordan Speranzo, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, with a BFA in Composition and a minor in conducting, and an AMSC in Music Entrepreneurship. Jordan has served as associate conductor with the Pittsburgh Savoyards, MD'd the Pittsburgh regional premiere of TheProm, with Stage 62, and has conducted the MFO for the last 2 years. Jordan 's compositions have been performed by Nat28, the CMU philharmonic, and the CMU contemporary ensemble, and have been the recipient of academic awards and recognition from the local new music community.

The MFO;'s associate conductor, Jiddu Vega is a 24-year-old violinist and conductor from Miami, FL. He attained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree at Carnegie Mellon University, under world renowned violinist Andrés Cárdenes and Christopher Wu. He has won and has been selected as a finalist for numerous awards, including the American Protégé International Piano and Strings Competition at Carnegie Hall, Alhambra Competition, Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra Fellowship, X-Factor and Quartet Award with SPHINX at the Curtis Institute of Music, and more. He made his soloist debut at Carnegie Hall New York at the age of 14, where he competed and won awards in an international competition.

This year, we will be presenting Nancy Galbraith’s latest double concerto “The Forest Cathedral", in a new chamber arrangement created just for the MFO. Nancy is a Millvale hometown hero, and we are delighted to be able to bring her music to life once again.  We will also be presenting the love letters of two of the great German romantics, united in their musical lineage, but divided by a gulf of racial hatred. Gustav Mahler and Richard Wagner's most intimate works frame a conversation about Wagners reprehensible beliefs, and Mahler’s living, breathing refutation of them. Between these two is Nancy Galbraith’s new double concerto “The Forest Cathedral", written as a musical tribute to her friends and collaborators, and suffused with the same tender reverence for nature that lives in the music of both of the other composers on the program. On May 15th, at 5:30 PM the Millvale festival orchestra will present:

This program will be performed at 5:30pm on May 15th. The performance will be held in  St. Nicholas' Croatian Church, at 24 Maryland Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15209. To learn more about the church, and the glorious murals that grace its walls, please visit https://vankamurals.org/

We will also be taking our first steps out of the Millvale Music festival, with a fundraiser/recital on May 1st, at the Sanctuary at Mr. Smalls. There you can hear the compositions of Jordan Berlin Speranzo, as well as a preview performance of the Rückert Lieder. Due to the generous support of the Frank-Rayche Studio for Creative Inquiry, CutTime Productions, and donors like you, we are already about halfway funded for 2026. but we need your help to make it the rest of the way! Tickets for this fundraiser recital are available as donation perks, or available for purchase at https://mrsmalls.com/events/love-letters-and-labyrinths/

Cut Time Productions has generously offered $3000 in matched funds. This means that for every dollar donated, they will give us one as well. Your contributions will have twice the impact. In addition, each donation of any size received in the last week of our campaign, May 8th-14th, enters us for a chance to win $1000 from Fractured Atlas's Spring Match campaign. All of the money raised will go towards paying the hard working musicians and administrators of the Millvale Festival Orchestra. These donations directly contribute to our ability to provide the MMF and the people of Pittsburgh engaging, free, and artistically compelling concerts! 

Our program this year features  24 excellent musicians- the most we have ever hired. These include soloists Kate Manuel, Erin Higgins and returning soloist Claire Gunsburry-Massey. We will deliver an evening of spectacular music making, sweeping romantic melody and compelling rhythmic flourishes. in future years, we have plans to expand our program, extending beyond our opening concert at MMF to a season of concerts, with a focus on putting the works of living composers in to the context of the music that came before them. We can only achieve these lofty goals with the support of people like you. 

Due to the generous support of the Frank-Ratchye Studio for Creative Inquiry, CutTime Productions, and donors like you, we are well on our way to being fully funded for 2026. but we need your help to make it the rest of the way! We encourage you to support this project however you are able to. If you can share it with friends, with the hashtag #supportMFO, you will be bringing us one step closer to our goal! Every bit of support helps, and we appreciate it all! We hope to see you all there on May 1st at the Sanctuary at Mr Smalls, and May 16th at St. Nicholas' church