In Sunday’s (3/18) Des Moines Register (Iowa), Michael Morain writes, “On a shivering Sunday afternoon in November 1937, when temperatures in Des Moines fell below zero, about 70 musicians from Drake University and the local community crowded onto the gilded stage at Hoyt Sherman Place. It was their first concert as the Des Moines Civic Orchestra, and the crowd’s response was as warm as the weather was not. … As the orchestra now called the Des Moines Symphony heads into its 75th season, there is no doubt it has lived up to the hopes that were born back in 1937. Today the group sounds polished and, as the state’s largest employer of artists, thrives at a time when orchestras in much bigger cities are collapsing under their own weight. … Although corporations pulled back almost 27 percent in 2009, leaving the orchestra with a deficit of about $344,000, support from individuals and private foundations picked up the difference. The organization turned a net loss of $113,000 in 2010 into a surplus of $328,700 the following year. … It opened the Des Moines Symphony Academy in 2003 at the Temple for Performing Arts, partly to build a new audience but also to supplement dwindling music programs in the public schools. After a modest start, the academy now enrolls 410 students for private lessons and youth ensembles.”
Posted March 20, 2012
