phony Whether playing the classical music of
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Founded in 1971, the symphony
has grown from a small volunteer
orchestra into a multi-faceted
organization, including a Youth
Symphony Orchestra, a Junior
Strings Orchestra, free family concerts, the
annual Richard R. Deas Student Concerto
Competition, Artist-in-Resident Programs in
area schools and the Wilmington Symphony
Birthday Club for young children.
“I feel fortunate to work with an organiza-tion
that is such a local cultural treasure,”
says Reed Wallace, executive director of the
Wilmington Symphony. “I’ve watched it
grow and build connections into the com-munity
over the past 10 years that I have
been director, and it brings prestige to our
community as well as a positive economic
impact.”
The Wilmington Symphony is a mem-ber
of the League of Symphony Orchestras
and operates as a nonprofit organization in
partnership with the University of North
Carolina Wilmington (UNCW). It is self-governed
by a board of directors comprised
of members of the community. Financial
support is derived from ticket sales, sponsor-ships,
grants, corporate and individual con-tributors
and special fundraising events, such
as the annual golf tournament classic.
“Both UNCW and the Wilmington
Symphony are very fortunate to have had
a mutually beneficial partnership since the
beginning,” Wallace says. “UNCW pro-vides
a portion of the conductor’s time, the
rehearsal space and the music library space.
In exchange, the orchestra provides an oppor-tunity
for qualified students to perform for
course credit, tickets for UNCW students
and a platform to showcase the tremendous
talent in the school’s music department,
including faculty members who are often fea-tured
soloists for various performances.”
A Sweet “Cherry Pie” History
Since its beginning, the Wilmington
Symphony Orchestra has been fortunate to
receive the support of dedicated people who
believed — and still believe — in the benefits
of a local orchestra, not only for themselves
but for the community.
When Gail Zack moved to Wilmington
in December 1970, from Johnson City,
Tennessee, she left behind a city orchestra she
helped to start. “I hated those first few weeks
in Wilmington,” Zack confesses, “because I
missed playing violin with the orchestra.”
As a way to bounce back, Zack and fellow
violinist Virginia (Jenny) Kusler decided to
organize an orchestra in Wilmington. “In
the spring of 1971, we called up Richard
Deas, head of UNCW’s music department
at the time, and asked to meet with him,”
Zack remembers. “To our delight, he was
excited about the idea of a local orchestra
and appointed a faculty member, William F.
Adcock, to be the first conductor.”
“We spent the next several months trying
to get the word out about the new symphony
orchestra,” says Zack. “Just before our first
organizational meeting was to take place,
we realized we had no music. Someone told
us that Wilmington had had an orchestra
back in the 1930s, and a man named Sipke
Feenstra had been the music librarian. We
decided to give him a call to see if we could
borrow some music. We quickly discovered
he wasn’t about to hand over the music to a
couple of strangers.”
Disappointed, Zack and Kusler decided
Bach, Brahms or Beethoven, the Broadway
show tunes of Rogers and Hammerstein or
Andrew Lloyd Webber, the works of jazz art-ists,
bluegrass pickers or any other musical
genres, the outstanding performances of
the Wilmington Symphony Orchestra (WSO)
have helped to define Wilmington as a city
with a vibrant cultural and musical heritage.