Culture in Kansas

With wild hopes but grave doubts, seven musicians gathered in Wichita, Kans. and laid plans to start a symphony orchestra. From the employees of Wichita's aircraft builders (Boeing, Beech) and the friendly musicians' union local, they managed to collect $300. They wrote letters to some 70 other musicians in nearby towns, asking them to play the first year without pay. The infant orchestra rehearsed in a hotel ballroom, where the players had to sweep the floor themselves. That was eleven years ago. Today, the Wichita Symphony has an $80,000 yearly budget and not even the local baseball club, the Wichita Indians, could be closer to the town's heart. Items:

P:The symphony operates two youth orchestras, drawn from surrounding communities, which also function as farm clubs for new players: 17 members of the 86-man orchestra learned their trade in the youth symphonies.

P:The symphony's women's committee, 500 strong, relentlessly blankets the town, has sold 4,400 season tickets for this season's six programs--which may well be a national record for community orchestras.

P:Each concert now has to be given twice to meet the demand--and it looks as if next year the programs will have to be played three times.

Last week Conductor James Robertson led the Wichita Symphony in its third concert of the season. The program ranged from the almost-modern Sibelius Concerto in D Minor (with 28-year-old Violinist Aaron Rosand) to Rimsky-Korsakov's well-worn Scheherazade--which miffed a few of Wichita's growing number of musical sophisticates, but wowed the big audiences. The performances sounded as rich and bold as a big-city orchestra's.

Much of Wichita's musical revolution was achieved by Symphony Manager Alan Watrous, 55, who believes that a community must grow its own culture ("I hate that word, but what the devil else can you call it?") rather than buy it outside. A violinist and onetime music teacher, Manager Watrous has a special culture-growing formula: get the symphony and school system to work together. A string quartet of symphony players gives 80 concerts a year in schoolrooms. Twice a year, the orchestra plays student concerts at the rate of four a day--no buses shuttle one crowd of music-hungry kids to the auditorium's front door and cart the preceding crowd of music-fed kids away from the back.

The Wichita Symphony's musicians only make $400-$500 a season, but more than half also teach in schools. The kind of life that combines teaching and music-making has drawn many players from big-city orchestras. "I was just one of scores of musicians in the city," says one performer. "I had to scrounge for additional income. I lived in a crowded, third-rate neighborhood. Here. I'm buying my own home in a clean, airy neighborhood, and I'm considered one of the leading members of the local music world. My teaching job gives me more satisfaction than some big-time musicians believe possible."

Wichita's musical life is rich and happy, but there is still one element missing. With two papers and a population of 200,000, the city has no regular music critic. But Wichita manages to enjoy its music anyway.

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