Like a Phoenix...

Many years later, in the mid-1970s, some of Conrad Gebelein's guitar students expressed an interest in playing together in some sort of ensemble. He pointed out to them that an orchestra made up solely of guitars wouldn't really sound all that good, so he got his students interested in the mandolin family of instruments instead. A mandolin ensemble would provide the plucked-string equivalent of the full voicing of a bowed-string orchestra, which guitars alone could not do.

Soon Mr. Gebelein had about fifteen serious and devoted amateur mandolin players and other instrumentalists, and in 1975-at the age of 80-he reconstituted the Baltimore Mandolin Orchestra for the third time and served again as its conductor.

The newly re-formed orchestra performed its first concert in 1975 at Johns Hopkins University. This third incarnation of the Baltimore Mandolin Orchestra continues today as a thriving, viable orchestra.

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