Reaching Out in Iowa

By Michael Walsh/Cedar Rapids

In bad times, the smaller orchestras usually suffer most. A happy exception is the Cedar Rapids Symphony. In its 72nd season, the orchestra has generated an $18,000 operating surplus, significant corporate sponsorship and enormous goodwill in a relatively small metropolitan area of 170,000. With a high caliber of performances and an impressive array of outreach programs that include free violin lessons for every third-grade public-school student, the organization has transcended its amateur origins to become a model for the whole country.

"I know of no other community of this size that supports an orchestra with a budget of $1.3 million," says conductor Christian Tiemeyer, who has led the orchestra since 1982. "The question I faced when I came was, How can we make music a real part of people's lives? And my answer was to serve the art we love, instead of asking it to serve us."

On the theory that education is the key to future growth, the orchestra has targeted many of its activities toward children. The Third-Grade String Enrichment Program began two years ago after the failure of a bond proposition that would have continued music education in the schools. With a corporate grant, the orchestra's string players provide instruction for nearly 1,200 pupils; those who wish to continue can sign up for lessons, which cost $150 annually. Financial aid is available, and no one has ever been turned down.

Older children can attend the Target Youth Concerts series, sponsored by Target Stores Inc. Each concert costs $1.50; last year more than 7,000 students heard the orchestra. Another children's program is the Discovery Concerts for fifth- and sixth-graders; preschoolers, meanwhile, can join Symphony Kids, half-hour learning-by-doing sessions designed to introduce kids to the joys of music. All this in addition to the orchestra's regular adult Masterworks Series of concerts in the restored Paramount Theater downtown, and pops and chamber concerts all over the city.

The pay isn't high -- roughly $5,000 a year -- but the orchestra has had no trouble filling ranks with local doctors, lawyers and engineers, as well as teachers and students from the nearby University of Iowa. Even the executive director, Kathy Hall, is an Iowa native and former bassoonist. "There's always going to be a segment of society that considers orchestras elitist," says local music critic Dee Ann Rexroat, "but the Cedar Rapids Symphony is working against that image. It's a little slice of local life onstage."

With reporting by Daniel S. Levy/New York