Welcome to Quincy: FOR ONE DAY, THE HILLTOP BECAME REAL
By Brent Dowlen
According to the official SOAR program, the Wenatchee Valley Symphony Orchestra was scheduled to begin at 7:15 p.m., followed by Broadway performances from Mari Nelson and Alexander Kilian, a message from The Hilltop, and David Foster & Friends with Katharine McPhee closing the festival from 9 to 11 p.m. It was an impressive lineup for the inaugural event, but simply listing the performers misses much of what made the next several hours work.
The Wenatchee Valley Symphony Orchestra took the stage first, and I have to admit that before SOAR, I did not know we had symphonic music of this caliber so close to home. I have heard symphonic music all my life, as almost everyone has, but mostly through recordings, movies and television. We sometimes forget how much of the music that gives our favorite films their scale, tension, emotion and sense of wonder originated with musicians sitting together in a room and creating that sound with actual instruments.
Hearing a full symphony in person strips away that distance. You can watch the strings move together, hear the brass enter behind them, feel percussion rather than simply hear it and begin to recognize how dozens of individual musicians become one instrument. When the orchestra performed the unmistakable opening associated with 2001: A Space Odyssey, the audience responded immediately. People applauded and called out as something deeply familiar suddenly arrived with the weight and dimension that only a live orchestra can give it.
I had lived here for years without really knowing what the Wenatchee Valley Symphony could do, and before their performance was over, I was already thinking about bringing my daughters to hear them. That is the kind of outcome Vince had been describing all afternoon. Nobody had to convince me that I should appreciate a symphony. The opportunity to experience a good one is all the convincing I needed. They played through multiple genres of songs that most people recognized from movies whether they had known it was symphonic music or not.