N.C. Symphony travels to remote areas

RALEIGH -- Musicians toting delicate cellos, lumbering harps and big twisting horns will soon roam far from the concert halls of the state's biggest cities into communities rarely exposed to classical music, under a pilot project the N.C. Symphony is about to launch.

Although the state's orchestra already visits 30 to 40 counties every year, there are many rural areas that it never reaches in its travels. The new project will send soloists and small ensembles to local community colleges and public schools to offer performance and instruction, depending on how interested people there are.

The initiative, which will be publicly announced Wednesday, is a partnership between the symphony and the state's community colleges. It will be paid for with about $170,000 in U.S. Department of Education money, which is expected to cover costs for one year.

David Chambless Worters, president and chief executive officer of the symphony, said he hopes that will be seed money that will spark continued interest in the project.

"The community colleges in many of these locations really are the epicenter of community activities," Worters said. "It struck us as a real natural partnership."

Worters, community college system president H. Martin Lancaster and Rep. David Price met in the symphony offices Monday to disclose details of the program. Lancaster, a former congressman and state representative, is retiring Wednesday and said he wanted to announce the initiative before he left office.

Lancaster said he grew up in rural North Carolina and his first exposure to orchestral music was when the state symphony performed in House of Representatives chamber, where he was a page. He is now a season ticketholder for N.C. Symphony concerts.

"I do think there is a hunger for programming that would be widely available to the public, more importantly to public school students and community college students, filling a need that has been unmet since the early '90s," he said.

Lancaster described the project as something of a revival of the state-run visiting-artists program that between 1971 and 1995 brought musicians, artists and performers to all 58 of the state's community colleges. He also compared the plan to the popular Merlefest multi-day bluegrass event that is based at Wilkes Community College in Wilkesboro, which brings in millions of dollars to the county and has enriched the college foundation by $8 million, he said. Merelefest performers also visit every school and nursing home in the county, he said.

Price, a Democrat from Chapel Hill, said it was also his early exposure to music -- as a high school French horn player in Tennessee -- that made it easier to agree to shepherd the funding for the proposal through Congress. "Just imagine what that would have meant in my small-town high school," said Price. "I really think this is a very good idea."

The symphony hopes that new pockets of classical music fans might be unearthed in areas that have not had large enough audiences to support performances of the full 69-member orchestra, and also new benefactors might step forward to make those concerts possible.

Musicians will begin arriving in small towns this September, when the new season begins. About half of the 175 concerts the full orchestra performs are outside the Triangle. craig.jarvis@newsobserver.com or (919) 829-4576