Although based in Cambridge, the Society is not specifically linked to the University, and members are traditionally drawn from a wide variety of backgrounds.
The Cambridge Philharmonic aims to perform ambitious programmes, and has a long tradition of working with professional soloists.
[1] The history of the Philharmonic can be traced back to 1887 when Dr Arthur Henry Mann, the organist at King's College Chapel, Cambridge, assembled a choir with an accompanying orchestra for a festival service commemorating the Golden Jubilee of Queen Victoria.
The singers subsequently became semi-permanent fixtures in the Cambridge music scene under the title of Dr Mann's Festival Chorus.
However the new arrangement did not last long and there followed a period of decline which was only finally arrested by the appointment of Eric Congsby, a popular local conductor, under whom the Society was reconstituted in the late 1930s to include both orchestra and chorus in a format which continues to the present day.