Welcome Notes for the 2022-2023 Season

By Susan Davenny Wyner, Music Director and Conductor

 
    Welcome to the Warren Philharmonic Orchestra's 2022-23 Season. Our programs celebrate the skills of our musicians and the vibrant range of orchestral music.
 
    Our fall concert, Luminous and Dancing Spirits, is dedicated to Patricia Lynn Latham (1952-2021). I planned the program to reflect some of the values she lived by -- family, friends, art, her passion for theater, her indefatigable support of community arts and culture. For family, we begin and end the concert with works by an extraordinary sister and her famous brother who shared a deep bond through their music. For theatricality, we bring joyous, surprising, strange, effervescent, wild, and yearning dances from a variety of contrasting cultures. 
 
    The Warren Philharmonic is committed to playing a vital role in education and community outreach. The WPO has performed Free School Concerts for thousands of the area's students. At the concerts the students explore the stories behind the music and hear each instrument of the orchestra, as players stand to give solo demonstrations. For many, this is the first orchestra they have ever seen "live."  Although COVID considerations have interfered with busing large groups of children to school concerts, WPO musicians plan to visit Warren City Schools for special up-close performances for the students this spring.
 
    WPO's unique Frank R. Bodor Strings of Joy! program puts free stringed instruments in the hands of children and gives them free lessons. The students have twice performed as soloists with the Philharmonic in works created especially for them.
 
    The Philharmonic's school-wide Music in Art Contest has produced hundreds of drawings by school children which have been exhibited at art galleries, museums and community spaces as far as 200 miles away. In 2019 the WPO collaborated with Any Given Child and SMARTS - Students Motivated by the Arts to create an immersive weeks-long Music in Art curriculum. 
 
    In these difficult times we give special thanks to our artists, to our board members, and to you, our supporters, and most precious listeners.

“Music is the language of the heart; it begins where speech ends.”
~Alphonse de Lamartine

This page was last revised on October 20, 2022.