The orchestra was founded in September 1946 when Dr. Joseph Wincenc  met with Homer Browning, Mrs. Sidney Marks, Mrs. E.N. Scott, and Philip Schweickhard to discuss starting a symphony orchestra in Amherst.  As a result, under the aegis of the Amherst Central High School Adult Education program,50 interested musicians were invited to a meeting and rehearsal.  Dr Wincenc became the founding conductor/music director, retiring after 50 years on the podium in 1996.

At the start of the second season, the Eggertsville-Snyder Rotary Club undertook the financial and business management of the orchestra as one of its community service projects.  In 1950, Loyal T. Murphy, then chairman of the Rotary Club Orchestra Committee, called for community wide control of the orchestra.   Since then the community service of the Amherst Symphony Orchestra has been sponsored and supported by the Amherst Symphony Orchestra Association; constitution and bylaws written by charter member T. Kayler Jenkins

Steeped in music from the age of five when he took his first violin lesson in Buffalo, Joseph Wincenc graduated from Bennett High School.  Following graduation from Oberlin Conservatory, he received a fellowship for study at the State Conservatory in Prague, Czechoslovakia where he obtained a Master of Music degree.  He returned to Buffalo to play with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, eventually as concertmaster.  Later he received his Master of Arts degree from Columbia University and extended his studies at State University College at Buffalo and at New York University.  Following a Julliard  Summer Fellowship at Chautauqua, he played in the Chautauqua Symphony Orchestra for five years.

Foregoing a professional career as a violinist, he taught briefly at Amherst Central High School and then became professor of music at State University College at Buffalo in 1947.  A recipient of an honorary doctorate from Canisius College in 1978, he had the rare honor of being awarded the title “Distinguished Teaching Professor” by the State University of New York. He was the recipient of many other citations, awards and honors.

His development as a conductor included training at Berkshire Music Center and invitational workshops conducted by the American Symphony Orchestra League.  A frequent guest conductor of the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra through the years, he also worked with Josep Krips as its associate conductor for several seasons.