Santa Cruz County Symphony
Founded in 1958, the Santa Cruz Symphony is led by Daniel Stewart, Music Director since 2013. The symphony performs at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium and the Mello Center for the Performing Arts in Watsonville, California. Each year they perform five classical concerts performed in Santa Cruz and Watsonville, a pops concert that benefits the music education programs, and a reduced admission family concert. The Symphony's free youth concert program introduces 4th and 5th graders to symphonic music via musician and docent school visits and a free concert.
It's a wonderful symphony: how a community volunteer orchestra became a top-rated organization
The history of our Santa Cruz County Symphony is a little like the popular movie, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” This is a tale about how different Bedford Falls would have been if George Bailey had not been around to make a positive influence on people’s lives. Even the smallest act became magnified into something of huge importance, bringing richness into his small town.
If Major Matilda Dedrick were still alive today, we could say the same thing about her determination to create a symphony orchestra for Santa Cruz. Her work—along with that of Dave Owen, Jim and Jo Rogers, Curt Bowman, and Norman Walters—seemed like a small enough task at the time. But today, what started as a relatively unpolished group of community musicians has grown to become one of the highest-rated for its class in California. It makes everyone proud.
The Santa Cruz Sentinel put out a call for prospective orchestra members, and 38 of them showed up at the organizational meeting on March 10, 1958. A total of 70 expressed interest in playing with the group. After ten rehearsal dates, with Detlev Anders of the San Francisco Symphony leading, the orchestra held its first concert on May 27, 1958. They played to an enthusiastic Civic Auditorium crowd of 2000, which gave a standing ovation halfway through the program and made cash donations as they left.
Post-concert news articles quoted several attendees who exclaimed it was “inspiring,” “a milestone,” “a real thrill,” and “terrific.” In a fit of optimism, pharmacist Melvin McRae exclaimed, “We won’t have to worry about juvenile delinquency when we can offer young people this.”
The news spread as far away as Grand Rapids, Mich., prompting Ned Colby, concert master for its local symphony, to write, “If there is an opening in the violin section, I’d like to be dealt in.”
The original musicians made it special
Although the initial emphasis was on providing a performance outlet for local musicians, these pioneers realized how necessary the symphony was to the cultural growth of the entire region. In 1971, the membership of the orchestra consisted primarily of county residents, with recent additions of UCSC and Santa Clara County musicians. Today, the orchestra is composed of professional musicians but in those early days, it really was a “pick-up” community group with local people such as Paul Sandas on the violin, Wally Trabing on the tympani and percussion, Symphony founder Matilda Dedrick on the violin, Sister Joan Louise on the contra bass, and William Doyle on the French horn.
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