The present day Philharmonic Society was born in 1954 in Lattimer Mines -- a little patch town a couple of miles to the northeast of Hazleton. In that year, Reverend Jospeh J. Ferrara, a Roman Catholic priest for the Diocese of Scranton, was installed as pastor d the Church of Saint Mary. Being an accomplished musician, he immediately set to work using music to foster parish unity.
Within a short time he convened a group of almost 100 parishioners whose voices he hoped to personally train and harness into a performing chorus. He believed that this would help to bring some well-deserved enjoyment into the lives of these hard-working people and, at the same time, help him to get to know them a little bit better. It didn’t take long for things to start happening.
By 1955 the group put on its first ever concert in the gymnasium of the then Hazle Township High School and concluded the program with the stirring “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s Messiah. The 1956 program included a group of hand-trained youths of the parish who, with the help of a few older and more accomplished musicians from the Hazleton Area, would become the orchestral accompaniment for the rapidly maturing chorus. The die was cast.
The very first rehearsals, because of the sheer size of the group, had to be held in the deserted Lattimer School House where the roof leaked and, during the cold weather, the chorus huddled around a pot-belly stove where they burned coal and wood to stave off the winter chill. Accompaniment was provided with the help a four-octave pump organ that used the same foot power as the old player pianos.
Thus the humble beginning of what would become a 34years odyssey. The search for rehearsal space and a place to call home would lead the Philharmonic Society through various VFW’s, Our Lady of Grace, Trinity Lutheran, Holy Trinity Slovak and Holy Trinity German church basements; Hazle Township, Hazleton Senior High, and Bishop Hafey High School auditoriums; the capitol Theater, the Feeley Theater and finally, in April of 1989 – its very own home – the J.J. Ferrara Center for the Performing Arts in downtown Hazleton.