About the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra

The mission of the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra is to enrich and educate musicians and audiences of northern Minnesota through innovative orchestral experiences.

The Bemidji Symphony Orchestra is a thriving community orchestra servicing the region of North Central Minnesota. We bring classical music to new audiences and provide performance experience for musicians. The Orchestra performs six subscription concerts each season and offers concerts for youth biannually. We also offer a Summer Pops concert.

Established in 1938 by Milton Dieterich, under the auspices of Bemidji State University, the BSO separated from the University in 2000 and became an independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit arts organization. During the 2003-2004 season, the BSO held a national search for its first independent conductor, and hired Dr. Beverly Everett who became the Orchestra's first resident conductor in 2005. 

Musicians in the Orchestra are selected through auditioning. The roster comprises both professional and amateur musicians alike, including community members, university students, university faculty, and highly qualified high school students. The Orchestra collaborates with talented guest artists who further enrich the community through special master classes and chamber recitals.

SYMPHONY GUILD: The BSO Symphony Guild, modeled after orchestra support organizations around the country, exists to enhance the Orchestra's presence in the community, and to help raise additional funds for the Orchestra.  It is open to men and women of all ages who are interested in donating their time and energy to the BSO through social engagements and fundraising projects.  Sample projects include the "Desserts by Design" gala event, as well as donor appreciation receptions.  For more information, please contact Sally Montebello.

Audition information: To receive detailed information on auditions, such as time, date, location and audition requirements, please contact the Orchestra's Personnel Manager Gretchen Rusch.

ArtsLab: Bemidji Symphony was one of 16 arts organizations in Minnesota—and the only Orchestra—to receive an ArtsLab grant. ArtsLab is a capacity building program for mid-sized arts organizations in Minnesota. The funding comes from a collaboration of five major arts funders in the state: Bush, F.R. Bigelow, Martag, McKnight and Saint Paul Foundations.  
 

Out and About with Music in Greater Minnesota:
Michael Barone Reflects on the BSO's April 26, 2009 concert in this report to his Minnesota Public Radio colleagues:            

"While music-lovers in the Twin Cities had many opportunities this past weekend to delight in performances of many sorts, including several appearances featuring Chanticleer or the combined artistry of the ensembles Cantus and the National Lutheran Choir, I found myself in Bemidji as participant in and auditor of another choral activity, and an extraordinary event.

Unlikely as it may seem, the Bemidji Symphony Orchestra, formerly functioning under the auspices of Bemidji State University, has provided music to this town of @12,000 souls for the past 70 years.  Who knew (except Bemidjians)?  However, in the year 2000, the BSO board separated from its collegiate roots and refocused its mission ‘to bring classical music to new audiences, while at the same time providing performance experience for both novice and accomplished musicians’.  Then in 2005, after a national search, they hired their first resident music-director and conductor, Dr. Beverly Everett.  She has provided the proverbial ‘breath of fresh air’, in a variety of ways.

A Texas native (whom, coincidentally, I met in 1993 while attending an organ inaugural celebration in Waco, TX, where Beverly was an undergraduate organ student of Dr. Joyce Jones at Baylor University), a DMA graduate in organ and conducting from the University of Iowa. and former music director of the Muscatine Symphony, Dr. Everett does not at first appear to be the ‘dynamic maestro’ type.  Tall and slender, she’s physically and emotionally quiet and undemonstrative.  Or so she seems.  Even on the podium, she does not wow you with overly dramatic gesturing.  But Beverly has intense, dark eyes that belie some real magic in her, and since taking over the Bemidji Symphony job, she immediately began to change attitudes and activities.

To increase the quality of the ensemble’s musicianship, and to generate an ongoing stream of youthful players within the community, Beverly urged the Headwaters School of Music/Arts to hire a violinist to teach there and also serve as concertmaster of the BSO.  Still an entirely volunteer collective of talent from college and community, the BSO now contains a greater number of players (ranging in age from 9 to 80-something) capable of exploring pretty much any repertoire Beverly brings to them.  They are still a grass-roots ensemble, but definitely ready and willing.

Already the quality of BSO programming, and performance, has risen, as has its audience, reportedly up a stunning 75% above the prior norm (am I overstating this?).  The surprises continue.  Last autumn, Ms. Everett coaxed internationally acclaimed pianist André Watts to appear as BSO guest soloist, definitely a consciousness-raiser for the community.  Her most recent adventure, this past weekend’s concert, thoughtfully combined a new work, “Sacred Vows”, by Minnesota composer Libby Larsen (based on a Cambodian poet’s reflections on his experience during the Khmer Rouge genocide in Cambodia in the 1970s) and, in eloquent contrast, Beethoven’s paean to peace and brotherhood, his Ninth Symphony.

Libby’s score, a BSO anniversary commission, sets a text by U Sam Oeur, translated by Ken McCullough.  The music’s technical demands are within the grasp of amateur forces, and its transcendent message is sufficiently powerful to be eloquently conveyed, and Ms. Larsen’s writing sufficiently communicative that the immense spirit of the piece is unmistakable, even if some minute details of its execution may occasionally slip between the cracks. 

As Libby has written it, baritone and tenor soloists  (Jake Endres and Brad Bradshaw, professionals from Saint Paul, filled these roles this past weekend) are characters in the poetic drama.  A narrator (yours truly) sets the mood, and a Cambodian native voice (optionally pre-recorded; on Sunday provided by Veashna Veat, whose family experienced the horrors of the Pol Pot regime) becomes ‘the people’, struggling against horrific circumstances, and ultimately swimming to freedom.  On Sunday, introductory comments from Everett, Larsen and Veat provided pre-performance insights and prepared the way for a ‘total experience’ by the local listeners.

How does a community orchestra and chorus cope with a brand new score that includes evocation of invading helicopter gun ships, a murderous guerilla attack on a peaceful family compound, the deprivations of forced labor detention in the jungle, the liberation of Phnom Pehn, and a choral section that vocalizes the word “Peace” in several dozen different languages?  They did incredibly well, and the audience, which sat in astonished and attentive silence throughout twenty minutes of ‘difficult contemporary music’, was emotionally charged by the experience, in all the right ways.

Then came Beethoven’s Ninth.  During rehearsal, I recalled the famous first recording of Beethoven’s famous Fifth Symphony, made in 1913 by the Berlin Philharmonic and Artur Nikisch, representative of the highest standard of performance a century ago.  I pondered the matter of the ‘apparent perfection’ towards which so many modern performers strive…a perfection fostered by the technology of recorded music and our ability to hear, and rehear performances and make invidious comparisons.  Is it fatuous to think that ‘perfection’ can ever be achieved?  The Berlin Philharmonic in 1913 was one of the world’s finest orchestras, yet we would not accept that standard or playing from them today.  Zoom forward into the 22nd century and wonder what critics will think of today’s acclaimed perfection of our Minnesota Orchestra?  Who can tell?  We approach perfection as we approach infinity, by half-steps…yet can never reach it.  Art lives in that ‘striving towards perfection’.  Striving is the most important element of the musical equation.

Then I thought of Beethoven, in whose head his Ninth Symphony existed in ‘perfection’, yet who stood before orchestra and chorus at that notable Viennese premiere on May 7, 1824.  As those musicians struggled with his ‘new music’, taking them to the very extremity of human capability (certainly for the vocalists!), did those folks onstage achieve ‘perfection’?  Did they meet Beethoven’s expectation, or even match the quality of the Berlin ensemble of 1913?  Was their sound different from anything our ears would accept today?  Beethoven, your remember, could not hear a note of it, and only became aware of the ‘perfection’ his symphony had communicated when he was turned to face the ecstatic and applauding audience, to whom his musical message reached out unfettered, and penetrated cleanly, regardless of how the performance may or may not have sounded.

What it was like in Bemidji?  I cannot say that the instrumentalists physical performance approached anything like our common understanding of executive ‘perfection’; matters of ensemble and intonation were hardly perfect, but under Beverly Everett’s inspired leadership their passionately dedicated energies, their striving for harmony, their wrestling with counterpoint, their persistent grip on forward motion was absolutely captivating, thoroughly compelling. 

The solo singers were exceptional…Bradshaw and Endres again, plus two very capable BSU senior vocal students, soprano Brittany Messer and mezzo Sara Wabrowetz…and deserve unalloyed commendation.  As for the choirs (Bradley Logan’s Bemidji Choir, carrying on the Paul Brandvik tradition at BSU; Patricia Mason’s Bemidji Chorale; and Christopher Fettig’s A Cappella Choir from Bemidji High School), they proved again that Minnesota IS a land of exceptional choral singers, and their 169 voices were, to my ears, the match of anything, anywhere.

But what really made this concert authentic ’perfection’ was the commitment of both the musicians and the listeners to the making, and the receiving, of a transformative experience.  The performers gave everything, held back nothing, bravely ventured onto thin ice (of which there was still quite a bit on the southern end of Lake Bemidji last weekend) and persisted indomitably to the glorious life-and-joy-and-brotherhood-affirming end.  The audience, innately comprehending Beethoven’s desire, that music be a transfer ‘from the heart, to the heart’, could not help themselves in their grateful appreciation (and, yes, astonishment…they made it!). 

Performances such as these get under the skin of a composition, whether it be Beethoven or Larsen…this was not a clinical revelation, but rather a bloody, hands-on coming-to-grips with the reality of music as a participatory experience.  In Bemidji, the excitement was almost sports-like…cheering on the home team, proudly victorious.  There’s a fine ‘arts story’ here to be told, and likely more in the months to come.  Ms. Everett, never one to rest on her laurels, has plans for the Verdi Requiem in the 2010-2011 season, in both a multi-media presentation and ‘concert’ performance.

Perhaps it was the weather (lovely for Saturday’s we-think-we-can dress rehearsal, gloomy drizzle for the concert on Sunday afternoon), or the fact that I appreciate and encourage the underdog, or that I have ‘family’ in Bemidji, or am just a sappy old fool.  But consider this…in a town with an area population of fourteen- to fifteen-thousand, ten percent of those folks were either making or taking in that music by Libby Larsen and Ludwig van Beethoven.  The stage at Bemidji High School auditorium was full to overflowing (220?), and the audience seats (1,100) were all full.  Afterwards, the universal question remained: “Was the concert recorded; can we hear it again?”  MPR’s classical service is capable of programming community-specific material to any of our network stations.  Let’s think about how we can best reflect, represent, and encourage the love of classical music in the communities we serve.  I believe that we have some good work yet to do."

                                                        - J. Michael Barone