After the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra went bankrupt in 2011 due to financial instability, attempts were made to keep the orchestra alive. To ensure the survival of symphonic music, Jon Garland and fellow musicians banded together to form Symphoria.

Learning from previous missteps and financial failures, several former Syracuse Symphony Orchestra members came together to discuss the future of symphonic music in Syracuse. With help, Garland created a new and sustainable orchestra in 2012. With multiple orchestras in the area, symphony music has remained part of central New York’s music scene.

Five years after the last chord was struck and instrument cased up, Garland, previous Syracuse Symphony Orchestra member and current director of Symphoria, and several other musicians refused to stop performing.

“It was a terrible time,” Garland said.

After the orchestra went under, he said there were great feelings of disappointment and confusion, but the musicians were compensated.

“We had given a substantial portion of what we had agreed to, as far as compensating and employment terms, back to the organization to ensure it would survive,” Garland said.

The music community came together to plan sustainable ways to work through the issues they experienced, he added.

As one of only two musician-led cooperative orchestras in the country, Symphoria has a range of musicians from their young 20s to late 70s with a mix of musical backgrounds. To avoid similar downfalls as the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra, Symphoria is a nonprofit, which allows the organization to apply for funding and grants.

“We really look for ways to make ourselves flexible in how we operate artistically and the underlying structure of the organization,” Garland said.

Similarly, the Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra has thrived in Syracuse since 1963 as a nonprofit organization. Every week, harmonious symphonic music fills the halls of the United Church of Fayetteville.

When Erik Kibelsbeck, musical director of the Onondaga Symphony Orchestra, taps his conductor baton twice, the musicians raise their bows and lick their lips, readying themselves to begin playing. After 17 seasons with the group, each gesture Kibelsbeck makes moves his entire body.

“I just love it. I need to make music,” Kibelsbeck said. “Even on those Mondays where the day job for us is like, ‘ugh really,’ then you come here and it’s all forgotten. It’s gone, and you’re caught up in the music you’re doing that night, and it’s fantastic.”

As a nonprofit, the organization applies for grants and funding that’s helped keep it in the community for nearly 55 years. The orchestra consists of musicians in high school and in retirement, and all the ages between. To give back, the orchestra is involved with Syracuse school districts, giving musicians as young as 11 years old a chance to play with the organization.

“Community involvement is very important to us, and in the last five years we’ve tried to do a lot better job at reaching out,” said John Harmon, French horn player and president of the board of directors for the Onondaga Civic Symphony Orchestra.

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The organization also provides internships to college students at Le Moyne College’s arts administration program. Harmon said the interns have contributed to the orchestra’s recent success and publicity. The interns’ revival of the orchestra’s social media presence has helped concert sales, Harmon added, and brings in a younger and more interested audience.

“I think classical music is constantly accused of being for a graying audience, but we’ve been hearing that for more than 100 years,” Kibelsbeck said. “But maybe that’s the time people are interested in it, but it’s thriving in the public schools and choral programs.”

Symphonic music has also flourished at Syracuse University since 1877, when the university established the first music program in the country. Every day since, chimes have been heard from the top of Crouse College, filling SU’s campus with a taste of the Setnor School of Music’s talent.

“I think the beauty of the Setnor School is that we are a moderate-sized school of music within a major university setting, so we can offer our students a level of interaction with faculty, guest artists and other students that sometimes bigger schools of music are not able to offer,” said Bradley Ethington, performance conductor and director of University Bands at SU.

As a school of music, Setnor prepares students to become professional musicians across various music fields. The school has a strict regimen for students, requiring them to practice daily.

“They have to practice every day to practice the materials required in the studio and their involvement,” Ethington said. “Many students are required to be a part of a major concert ensemble every semester, so they have to practice every day.”

After the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra went under, the music community joined in harmony to keep the sound alive.

Once someone’s achieved just a little something with an instrument, musicians start considering what they’re trying to accomplish when performing, Garland said. As musicians become more educated, he added, goals become self-fulfillments, and it’s easier for composers to recognize what they want and how to fulfill that desire.

With that philosophy, Symphoria continues to grow as an orchestra in the Syracuse community.

“It’s very rare for a new orchestra to be formed,” Garland said.

“The orchestras that are in the area have been around for many years, so they have a legacy of how they’ve interacted with the community,” he added. “But we have a different opportunity because we get to build those relationships.”

Published on December 3, 2017 at 9:48 pm

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