The Arkansas Symphony Orchestra's Philip Mann Society, which includes major donors to the ASO's annual fund, gathered backstage at Robinson Center Performance Hall the evening of April 6 for wine and snacks and to sit onstage with musicians as they ran through a rehearsal for casual concert events the following weekend.
For the benefactors, it was their first time to hear the sound of the orchestra as it performed in a shell designed just for the performance hall.
As an added bonus, they watched a tally board as the ASO amassed enough donations to take the top spot in ArkansasGives, a 12-hour online giving event that garnered more than $5.6 million for more than 900 charitable causes. In the category for large nonprofits, the ASO raised nearly $208,000, more than double that of St. Joseph School, which came in second.
The ASO raises more than $1 million each year from individual donors to support the concerts and music education programs for the community. Members of the Philip Mann Society give $5,000 or more. Mann, the maestro himself, mingled with donors backstage as if it were a family reunion.
The concerts were the last in the 2016-2017 Stella Boyle Smith Masterworks season, part of which was performed in the newly renovated Robinson Center. ASO concertmaster Andrew Irvin performed Bruch's Violin Concerto No. 1 on a program that also featured Sibelius' Symphony No. 2 and Beethoven's The Consecration of the House Overture.
-- Story and photos by Cyd King
High Profile on 04/16/2017