Introducing Philip Wharton’s new Symphony in full score. I’ll be conducting the first performances of the piece with the WCFSO tonight and tomorrow. Learn more about Philip and his previous work with us leading up to this weekend’s world premiere.
View and interact with Philip’s score
[Download the score as a pdf file.]
This week the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Symphony, which I direct, celebrates 80 years of orchestral performances in northern Iowa. To mark the occasion we’ll be giving a free concert tomorrow night in the newly-rebuilt Kersenbrock Auditorium at Waterloo West High School, where the orchestra performed for a number of decades prior to the opening of our current venue in 2000. Here is a 1938 shot of the WCFSO at our first home, East High School, with music director George Dasch:
Needless to say, our whole team at the WCFSO is deeply humbled to caretake the legacy of an organization with so much history in the community. On Friday, in response to that legacy, we’ll be emphasizing some of the things we feel will allow us to continue contributing to it for 80 more years.
The first is a thoughtful and sustained commitment to music education and engagement. That commitment will be represented at this concert by the 35 students from local high schools joining us onstage, but it’s present throughout every WCFSO season in an array of programs inviting people of all ages to explore music. [I’ll highlight one of those programs here later in the month.]
The second part of our effort to ensure our relevance in the community is an enterprising approach to programming and presentation guided by curiosity and open-mindedness, and if you have ever been to one of our concerts you know exactly what I’m talking about. This week’s musical exploration centers on a brand new symphony by Iowa native Philip Wharton, a movement of which will debut Friday prior to the complete performance on Saturday.
The culmination of a three-year project with Philip, this wonderful new piece is much more than just a world premiere for us. We see it as a symbol of our contribution to the aforementioned legacy of the WCFSO, and I suppose it really is a special birthday gift – an ongoing effort to connect musicians, composers and audiences and to create a uniquely open and tolerant environment for engaging with music.
