Arts Activities Support

This season 80 orchestra musicians and 160 singers performed with 8 featured guest artists in front of 2,590 concert attendees. We experienced a 34% increase in overall audience attendance and estimate 17% were first time Wayzata Symphony Orchestra attendees. 89% of individual donations this season came from renewing contributors. 11% of our donations came from new contributors, showing an increase in our base support. The Wayzata Symphony Orchestra sought out to advance its mission of bringing together accomplished and passionate musicians to engage the community with enlightening concert presentations. We were successful in achieving the following goals: Present new and familiar technically challenging works in every concert. Partner with local soloists and composers to bring light to new artists and works. Illuminate the ‘inner life’ of the music through verbal commentary and multimedia presentations. This season was challenging yet rewarding. We presented a world premiere, time-honored masterpieces, showcased world class soloists and incorporated multimedia into our performances this season. Our collaborations challenged the orchestra to accompany guest artists at a very high level which resulted in positive feedback from audience members. Each season we strive to broaden our community and this season we were successful in reaching more people through various social media and streaming outlets. We encountered challenges with live streaming to assisted living communities this season. The acoustics in the Wayzata Community Church sanctuary proved to be challenging for the live stream. In order to continue in these efforts, we will have to find quite a bit more funding for equipment which will enable a higher quality product. However, we learned about what is needed to better the technology for the future. We enjoy educating our audiences with facts about composers and their works. This season we were successful in reaching our goal to include information about our orchestra members and guest artists in the written programs. Our goal is to continue to use our Long-Term Planning Committee to further develop ways to reach and educate our audiences in the future. We were successful in reaching our intended community this season. Our outreach efforts of presenting four diverse programs resulted in reaching more new audience members. Specifically, the “Wind Wizards” program reached more children and youth because of our unusual "Balloon" soloist; the collaboration with Minnesota Poet Laureate Joyce Sutphen attracted audience members interested in literature and poetry; The Brahms' Requiem attracted and engaged audiences who know and love choral music and that piece in particular; The Planets program with our guest narrator from the Minnesota Astronomical Society brought a large number of audience members who were attracted by the science focus of the concert. We feel that with our programming this season we targeted a diverse audience community that we had not reached in previous seasons. We continued to reach our goal for accessibility by including free admission to our concerts and presenting programs in locations that are designed for ease of use by all physical abilities.