Wartburg Community Symphony

The Wartburg Community Symphony, founded in 1952, is made up of college students, community members, and professionals. Dr. Wade has been directing the ensemble since 1987, and performances are held in Neumann Auditorium. Student members of the symphony rehearse on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday afternoons, and the full ensemble meets once a week on Monday evenings. It is a unique entity in that it is both Wartburg affiliated and its own organization; there is a symphony board, season tickets are available. The organization relies almost exclusively on community and business sponsorship as well as memberships and ticket sales to fund its work which includes not only concerts but also scholarships for the student musicians.

Typically there are four or five concerts in a season, each with a different special feature. The WCS brings in many guest soloists of very high quality and a variety of specialties, including most recently pianists Frank Weins and Daria Rabotkina, double bassist Diana Gannett in the 2008-2009 season and violinist Jessica Lee and bassoonist Peter Kolkay in the 2009-2010 season. Waverly dance studio Kinetic Energy has been part of a few concerts as well. This December, they will be dancing to the symphony’s performance of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake. The annual December kid-friendly matinee concert includes Christmas favorites along with popular classical literature. For the few years and continuing at this year’s December concert, Cedar Valley radio personality Jacqueline Halbloom provides narration for one of the pieces; last year, she accompanied Dr. Brian Pfaltzgraff in narrating Robert Kapilow’s The Polar Express, and this year will be retelling The Night Before Christmas.

The membership of an ensemble of the WCS’s caliber is not the only non-traditional aspect of the group. Often, the symphony’s opening concert is a silent movie accompanied by its original music; this ensemble is one of the few in the country who performs such works. Also, in April of 1996, the WCS traveled on a Caribbean cruise on The Norway performing two Charlie Chaplin silent films.

As conductor, Dr. Wade has led the Wartburg Community Symphony to unprecedented success including six world, national, and state premieres.

The WCS’s goals are to offer innovative programs, higher professional musicians to provide top-quality performances, feature outstanding soloists, enrich the cultural life of Waverly and the Cedar Valley, and enable talented student musicians to continue private study through scholarships.

The ensemble was also mentioned in a recent issue of Midwest Living magazine.

The next concert is December 12 at 2 PM in Neumann Auditorium.

For current season information, visit http://www.wartburg.edu/symphony/

For information on conductor Dr. Janice Wade, visit http://www.wartburg.edu/music/wade.html

For a rave review of the WCS from one of its guest soloists from the 2005-2006 season, visit http://henrydoktorski.com/misc/wartburg.html