About Us

The Davenport Pops Orchestra, endorsed as a residential college orchestra, was founded by a group of Yale undergraduates in the spring of 2005. The orchestra is currently supported financially by Davenport College.

As a student organization, the orchestra aims to make the orchestra experience accessible to as many undergraduates as possible, both those who play instruments and those who just like to listen. While there are a large number of student orchestras at Yale, most groups focus on classical music; with this in mind, the Davenport Pops Orchestra hopes to expand the musical offerings of the Yale community - and appeal to a wider audience than is usually targeted by classical orchestras - by offering programs of well-known popular music.

The Davenport Pops plays a wide variety of music, with repertoire that includes film/TV scores, Broadway, jazz, popular classical works, cultural genres, and original student works.

If you would like more information about the Davenport Pops Orchestra (affectionately called "DPops" by its founding members), please take some time to browse through this website. And please - if you still have questions, don't hesitate to email the presidents Trinh Nguyen and Mike Educate, and ask!

Board Membership

While DPops membership is open to all Yale undergraduates as well as graduate and professional students, the executive board is typically composed of undergraduate students representing all the residential colleges.

Students are able to serve in many different capacities, from conducting, arranging music, fundraising, and doing community outreach work.

Auditions for conductor and elections for board positions are held each spring at the end of the term, and are open to all students.

Audition Information

We generally hold auditions during the last weekend before classes at the beginning of each school year in the afternoon and early evening. If for whatever reason you didn't audition but would still like to be in Dpops, don't worry about it: we're always happy to consider more musicians. Depending on when you contact us, we'll determine which concerts you are eligible to play in, but generally speaking, all you need to do contact us, and we'll set up a time. Prepare a brief solo that represents your abilities. You may also receive some short excerpts of sight reading. We would love for you to give us a try; we promise you will not regret it. (We're sure Cole Porter would have joined if he were living today.)

(Oh, and you definitely do not have to be a Davenport student to join. Our group represents a cross-section of all residential colleges, all instrument families, all personalities, and a passion to excite our audience by playing the music that they, and we, dream about.)