The interior of the Paducah Symphony Orchestra’s newly renovated Symphony Hall; the orchestra’s main concert venue will remain the Carson Center for the Performing Arts. Photo by Carly Dick.
In Friday’s (3/7) WPSD Local 6 (Paducah, Kentucky), Carly Dick reports, “After more than five years of work, Paducah Symphony Orchestra is completing its move to the historic site that formerly housed Walter Jetton High School with the grand reopening of its Symphony Hall. The organization is celebrating the renovation with a ribbon cutting ceremony [on] Saturday, followed by a tour of the facility and a concert at 7 p.m. in the brand new Symphony Hall. Paducah Symphony Orchestra has a rich history with the former Walter Jetton Jr. High School, performing some of its original concerts in its auditorium in the 1980s. CEO Reece King said … despite the challenges presented by constructing a state-of-the-art concert hall in a building on the National Register of Historic Places, they completed the project in a timely manner…. King said … the building has touched the lives of many Paducah locals…. ‘I think anytime you can save a historic structure while repurposing it, bringing it up to date with technology, and then, in our case, having an education facility…it’s a marriage of all of the right things for the community’ … The Carson Center will still be the orchestra’s main concert center; Symphony Hall will create new opportunities for the organization.”
