Outlet in Waukesha

.The Wisconsin A.F.M. official thought he knew a poor idea when he heard one. Start a symphony orchestra in little (pop. 20,000) Waukesha? The A.F.M. man could already see his musicians suing for their salaries. "There isn't going to be any symphony," he said. "Oh, yes there is," said Milton Weber, violin professor at Waukesha's Carroll College. "And you are going to be at the first concert, playing the cymbals."

That was in 1947. Last week, when the 80-man Waukesha (pronounced wauk-a-shaw) Symphony gave its third concert of the 1950-51 season before the usual standing-room-only audience, the A.F.M.'s Frank Hayek was right there with his cymbals. Moreover, he is now one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Waukesha's orchestra.

Chiropodists & Cellos. The idea was Professor Weber's. "Unless our small towns are good," he thought, "we cannot say that we have a cultured country." He wanted a town orchestra as an "outlet for the musician who doesn't want to be a virtuoso but who still wants to play"--and who otherwise doesn't have a chance "unless he is a little Heifetz." Nelson Vance Russell, president of Carroll College, was as eager as Weber, and Cymbalist Hayek finally agreed to try. Result: the Waukesha Symphony.

Weber and Hayek rounded up a nucleus of professionals. For the rest, says Weber, "we took in everyone who could creep and crawl." The non-pros include mailmen, policemen, engineers, salesmen and a chiropodist. One musician, an accountant, rides his motorcycle 30 miles from his Watertown job, wearing an old Air Force flying suit over his tuxedo, to play. Until she retired to have her fourth baby, his wife used to ride with him, clutching her cello. Now, at their five concerts a year in the Soo-seat Waukesha High School auditorium, Waukeshans hear creditable and sometimes even polished performances of the classics and a fair sampling of moderns.

"A Lot of Pleasure." At first, Carroll College (500 students) supplied the money. But now Waukeshans themselves put up $10,000 for the budget, and have a wonderful time doing it. Some of the money comes from such citizens as Evan Evans, 68, proprietor of "Pop's Beer Depot," who doesn't care about music but still feels that, "Well, you got to give them a coupla dollars--it gives a lot of people a lot of pleasure."

Ticket sales make up better than a third of the budget. Waukeshans pay $6 for season tickets, $1.80 for singles; students pay $1. Another source of income is the annual Symphony Fair, which last year featured, among other items, homemade jelly put up by Actor Alfred Lunt (a Carroll alumnus), a folk-song garden party and an art show of paintings owned by townspeople. All in all, last season's deficit was only $22.

Wrote the Milwaukee Journal's Music Critic Richard S. Davis, who has no regular symphony orchestra in Milwaukee to criticize: "It may well be that there are dedicated towns more devoted to music than this one is, but . . . there can't be many of them."

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