Earl Horlyk
SIOUX CITY -- Right now, the third floor of the Orpheum Electric Building may be noisy with construction work. Soon, it will be filled with beautiful music.
By mid-September, the Sioux City Symphony Orchestra's 2,800-square-foot Gilchrist Music Education Center will be ready.
That timing neatly lines up with a Sept. 27 concert from Grammy Award-winning trio Time for Three who will help mark the start of the symphony's 110th season.
Symphony Executive Director David Gross said he and Music Director Ryan Haskins have been making plans for the $1.2 million center for nearly two years.
"We had to go through a lot of blueprints before getting to this stage," he said while observing the work of the construction crew. "We're in the home stretch now."
The center will feature a music library containing hundreds of scores and thousands of pages of sheet music spanning classical masterworks, contemporary compositions and rare editions, all curated by the symphony's operations manager and librarian Bradley Miedema.
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Currently, the collection, which supports symphony concerts, educational programs and community outreach, is stored in pull-out drawer cabinets in a quaint room in the symphony's office on the first floor of the historic Orpheum Theatre.
"At the music center, Brad will have more room to spread out while having plenty of space to grow," Gross said.
Haskins will also have more space to spread out in a customized office space for himself as well as for the symphony's team of music educators.
Reaching more than 40 schools and more than 12,000 students per year, the symphony's efforts toward music education help keep the arts alive in the school systems.
"Our education and community-wide outreach programs allow us the opportunity to take live music to the people and share it in a very special way within our community," Haskins said. "Through these programs, the SCSO remains committed to the vital role we play in civic and community life.
"Music is a way to express a person's emotion and we want to make it accessible for everybody in the community," he added.
To that end, the center will feature three rehearsal spaces for the symphony's Youth Orchestra members and for individual music students. Music lessons are offered free of charge.
"Nobody should be denied music education due to cost," Haskins said.
"The symphony works in tandem with the various school districts," Gross interjected. "Only now, our symphony members won't have to travel to individual school buildings. Instead, students can come to us and learn to play in our state-of-the-art rehearsal studios."
Each rehearsal space is sound-proof and simulates the acoustics that can be found in much larger performance spaces.
"You can control the sound with a panel on the wall," Haskins said. "I'm actually having fun playing it."
Since the center will also house the symphony's digital media equipment, one of the rehearsal studios can be utilized if the student needs an audition video for college.
"One of the reasons for our music education center is to find future symphony musicians," Gross said. "Even if a student chooses not to pursue it in the future, an understanding of music is so important for quality of life."
Haskins nodded in agreement.
"Music is such an important part of our lives," he said. "We want to share that with the community and we will be able to do so with the Gilchrist Music Education Center."
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Food and Lifestyles reporter
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