When Karen Kapella, executive director of the Symphony of Northwest Arkansas, pulls out her crystal ball, she can see the next decade clearly.
Asked what she envisions when the 3-year-old orchestra turns 13, Kapella doesn’t hesitate:
“More concerts, in more parts of the region,” she says.
“We’ll have an education program that is doing things no other orchestra in the country is doing, reaching every student in the region with the opportunity to be exposed to music and the opportunity to learn to play an instrument.
“Paul is definitely still with us,” she adds of music director Paul Haas, who has been with SoNA since it was reincarnated from the remnants of the North Arkansas Symphony. “And we’ll have an endowment.
We’ll have a major funder step up and provide an endowed gift so we have less stress raising all the money needed every single year.”
Haas adds that in that envisioned future, the orchestra will also play more varied concerts - “many different kinds of pops concerts and many different kinds of classical concerts to engage different elements of the community in different ways.”
And that leads Kapella and Haas back to why the orchestra has been so successful in its first two seasons - strong artistry coupled with a strong vision and a strongly supportive audience.
Kapella credits Haas fora “dynamic” presence and musical choices that make concerts “so interesting and fun and exciting.”
Haas calls Kapella the “Energizer bunny - but the souped-up Terminator version” and says the SoNA audience is “incredible.”
“They’re so charged up by the performances and what they get out of them that they give off this really great energy at every concert,”he says. “They love what they’re hearing, and the orchestra loves playing for them. You won’t find a lot of orchestras that have a relationship like this with their audience. Both of us feed off the other.
“It’s interesting that a lot of our regulars are not typical symphony people,” Haas adds. “They went to a concert and became hooked. That’s the kind of outreach andengagement you need to have for an orchestra to succeed.”
Haas promises to “keep raising the bar” in the fiveconcert season three, which starts Nov. 16.
“People in the audience expected something in the first season, and we gave them something better. In the second season, they expected something better, and we raised the bar again. People are no longer apprehensive;
they’re excited. Because they have never been let down.”
Kapella says perhaps the most exciting news about the 2013-14 season won’t happen on the stage Nov. 16 - or on the stage, period. SoNA has hired principal flutist Kristen Predl as a part-time director of education.
“She has some incredible, cutting-edge programs planned,” which Kapella expects will be seen and heard in schools next semester.
“No one has a young audience like we have a young audience,” Haas says.
“Partly that’s programming, and partly it’s just the region.
But it’s kind of who SoNA is. I’m really happy to have garnered this elusive prize.
But what the education program is about is 15, 20, 25 years down the line, really solidifying our future audience.”
Whats Up, Pages 11 on 11/01/2013