By Staff
Nov. 12, 2005, will be recalled as a landmark date in Dowagiac's cultural development like that night in early 1992 when Pulitzer Prize-winner Gwendolyn Brooks filled Central for a poetry reading.
Her appearance led to the 1993 creation of the week-long Dogwood Fine Arts Festival featuring novelist Kurt Vonnegut.
Who yet knows the possibilities christening Dowagiac Middle School's Performing Arts Center with the Kalamazoo Symphony Orchestra might unleash?
Conductor Barry Ross praised the acoustics, the enthusiastic audience response from the capacity crowd of some 840 whose standing ovation elicited an encore, “The Pirates of the Caribbean,” and found the perfect word for those responsible for this incredible unprecedented event - “visionaries.”
How else to describe imaginative leaders of an innovative town of 6,000 whose government recently received an international accolade and whose fine arts festival driven by doggedly dedicated volunteers has raised almost a generation of youngsters inculcated in the arts - an exposure that will enrich their entire lives, whether they realize it yet or not.
We as a region should feel proud that southwest Michigan is inhabited by musicians of this caliber.
For Jeff Robinson's 146 singers and Josh Bartz's 35-piece brass ensemble, impressionable young vocalists and instrumentalists were opened to opportunities that can exist after graduation for a lifetime of making music.
Is it fair to say that for many of the 840 it might have been their first time to hear orchestra music performed live?
The Kalamazoo Symphony, Michigan's third-largest professional orchestra in its 85th season, did an admirable job of providing a program offering something for everyone.
There was approachable “Star Wars” movie music, John Williams' “Anakin's Theme” and “Duel of the Fates” from “The Phantom Menace,” with the menacing Darth Vader lurking beneath the bright melody, to songs inspired by art in Mussorgsky's “Pictures at an Exhibition,” from the bustle of “The Marketplace at Limoges” to the majestic grandeur of “Great Gate of Kiev.”
Other selections included Berlioz's “Hungarian March,” “Concert Etude” featuring trumpeter Jonathan Kretschmer, “Jupiter” from Holst's “The Planets,” Shostakovich's “Festive Overture” and Andrew Lloyd Webber's “Phantom of the Opera” overture.
Many thanks to all who helped realize the Dowagiac Union Schools' FIne and Performing Arts Department's vision for this gift of an unforgettable debut for the PAC, from the Band Boosters to the St. Denys Foundation and Michigan Council of Arts and Cultural Affairs.