Sound development

guest commentary by John Jeter, music director and conductor of the Fort Smith Symphony. (Editor’s note: Jeter will pen an “Arts Issues” column to appear on The City Wire the first and third Friday of each month beginning in July. The column will cover a wide range of topics in the broad arts communities.)

The Symphony has just announced its upcoming 2011-2012 concert season called “Lights and Sound.” It’s going to be a high-water mark in the Symphony’s history.

Highlights include Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring” which is one of the most important and awesome pieces of music ever composed, the internationally renowned Celtic ensemble, “Cherish the Ladies” and the first ever symphonic “History of Rock and Roll” concert. The orchestra will also feature fiddler/violinist and composer Mark O’Connor as part of the inaugural season of Fort Smith’s new Festival on the Border.

Founded in 1923, the Fort Smith Symphony is the oldest orchestra in Arkansas. In recent years it has become a fully professional level city/regional orchestra with a roster of more than 100 paid musicians from 7 states and a full-time staff of 4.

The orchestra performs 6 subscription concerts each season: 3 classics, 2 pops and 1 holiday concert. These concerts feature a wide range of music, internationally acclaimed guest artists and regional community collaborations. The size of the orchestra averages about 90 musicians per concert and sometimes reaches 100 or more which is the size of orchestras in much larger metropolitan areas. The orchestra presents all of its concerts at the Arkansas Best Corporation Performing Arts Center in downtown Fort Smith.

The Symphony offers a number of free educational programs including Earquake!TM and Symphony-in-the-Schools.

Now beginning its ninth year, Earquake!TM is an award-winning multi-media series of concerts featuring full-symphony orchestra, live video projection, dance, audience participation and exciting young guest soloists. We call it EARquake!TM because most of the music is loud and fast and “assaults” the ears (in a good way!) like a seismic event or earthquake. These concerts are performed for more than 2,600 sixth grade students throughout the River Valley and Eastern Oklahoma.

The Symphony provides study guides to participating schools to help prepare students for this music education experience. The concerts are free events for participation schools and are built into the music curriculum of many of the public school systems in our region. These are standing room only and are free due to the extremely generous support of many businesses and patrons in our region. One of the many positive outcomes of Earquake!TM is a significant increase in participation of students in the school music programs in our area. Many teachers and students have mentioned Earquake!TM as an influence in their decision to join a school music ensemble.

Symphony-in-the-Schools features live performance/presentations by the Fort Smith Symphony String Quartet. The ensemble travels to more than 40 public and private schools from Sallisaw to Ozark bringing live music and music education into the schools for fifth-grade students.

Other Symphony educational activities include a guest artist in the schools program, music director in the schools program and specific educational activities organized around specific concerts such as the recent visit of composer William Grant Still’s daughter to Fort Smith.

The Fort Smith Symphony recently completed the first ever recorded cycle of the complete symphonies by Arkansan William Grant Still (1895-1978). The 3 CD’s/downloads were recorded by Naxos, the world largest classical label and will be for sale worldwide. This is a significant accomplishment for an orchestra based in a community  our size. The first two CD/download releases sold well in the U.S. and internationally, and continue to be broadcast on classical music stations from Los Angeles to London.

The Symphony continues to be involved with quality-of-place initiatives and economic development supplying information, talking to prospective professionals, tickets, etc., and is frequently utilized as a recruiting tool by local corporations as they look for professionals to live and work in the River Valley. No matter one’s musical tastes or interests in the Arts, a vibrant and healthy Arts community is one of a number of key indicators of a quality community. Just ask any site selector for a large corporation what they are looking for when considering a new facility, quality of place is always high on the list.

Of course, for the Symphony in the end, its about the music. Whether it’s performing great masterworks that have stood the test of time, new music that speaks to us today,  cool Jazz or Hollywood blockbuster film scores, the Symphony is proud to present quality music to concert goers in our region.

Because of the generosity of our many supporters, ticket prices have remained affordable. The Symphony programs as wide a range of music as it can within the context of having a Symphony on stage. From Classical music to Country or Pop, there is nothing like a live performance with performers communicating directly to an audience. Here’s encouraging you to attend the Symphony or for that matter, attending many of the excellent live concerts in our area.