SUBSCRIBER CELEBRATION

May 13, 2008

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Our History

In 1965 a group of musicians, led by Florida Southern College professor Dr. Ken Anderson and Lakeland businessman Jay Erwin, decided that they would organize an orchestra to provide classical music for their community. The group with Erwin as conductor called itself the Lakeland Civic Symphony and began with 30 musicians and an audience made up of family members and a few friends. Their financial base consisted of a large glass jar, marked "donations," which stood at the concert hall door.

Today that small effort has grown into a highly polished, regional orchestra made up of over 80 exceptionally talented and mostly unsalaried musicians who still play for the love of bringing classical music to the Central Florida area. Indeed, the orchestra, which changed its name in 1987 to the Imperial Symphony Orchestra, is such a valued entity that it receives city, county, and state funding as well as support from corporations and private donors.

These musicians average 50 rehearsals each season and play 15 concerts. Besides the five Masterworks concerts, two family concerts each year at Youkey Theatre at the Lakeland Center, the ISO gives two free pops concerts in Lakeland and Winter Haven. A reduced rate pops concert is also held each spring at Historic Bok Sanctuary in Lake Wales.

The ISO is deeply committed, also, to educating children and plays four concerts each year for fourth and fifth graders from all over the county. It is gratifying to see the 9,000 school children who attend these performances and to realize that it is the first time the vast majority of them have ever seen a live performance of an orchestra playing classical music. What is especially significant, however, is to have musicians join our orchestra who tell us that coming to those school performances was what fascinated them and first made them desire to play a musical instrument. Incidentally, it was a group of ISO musicians who were responsible for beginning the string program in Polk County schools.

Continuing its firm commitment to young people, the ISO holds a Young Artists Competition each year where one or two high school or college students are selected to play as guest artists with the ISO at its spring masterworks concert. In addition, there is our annual Cookie Concert, performed on a Saturday morning for children and their parents. This concert is designed to entertain as well as to educate in hopes that the children will be eager to play a musical instrument either at school or at home.

Education for adults is also provided for the the ISO. Music director and conductor, Mark Thielen, provides a fascinating and informative lecture with music at Tea & Symphony the Tuesday before each masterworks concert. The subject of each lecture is devoted to the pieces which will be played by the orchestra the following week, and this enables the Tea & Symphony audience to appreciate the concert to a greater degree and to learn more about classical music.

Throughout its history, the ISO has been blessed with enthusiastic and forward-looking board and guild members, hard-working staff, and devoted musicians. In 1994, Governor Lawton Chiles publicly saluted this commitment when he presented the ISO with the prestigious Governor's Award for Voluntarism in the Arts, recognizing its contribution of over 22,500 volunteer hours in one year alone.

Truly, the Imperial Symphony Orchestra holds a unique place in the cultural life of Polk County by making it possible for its residents to hear classical music performances.