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When someone turns 100 years old, that's huge, as an organization to turn 100 is also

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just as large. Many nonprofits in particular never make it this long. My name is Robert

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Reid. I'm the executive director of the Madison Symphony Orchestra. We're celebrating 100

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years. An amazing thing is we've only had four music directors, so that means that they

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usually have had an average tenure of 25 years apiece. One, two, three, four. Our current

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director, John DeMaine, is going to be stepping down after 32 years. We have 91 musicians under

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contract. One of the things I love about being an orchestra of our size, our musicians,

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they are here because they want to be here. They want to play, they want to do, have fun

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doing that. It's not just a job. And you come here, and all of a sudden you've developed

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a sense of family. Many venues across the country and world, you can't fully hear the

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orchestra. I'm not making an exaggeration. I think our hall is one of the top twinning

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halls in the United States of America. When you come here, it is served to you on a silver

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platter, and so you hear everything, and you hear this lush string sound, and you hear

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all these things, and it becomes exciting, and you know, you know, lift your spirit when

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you're sitting in your seats. The symphony is for the community. And so when we were

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thinking about what are we going to do to celebrate the 100th anniversary season, we

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thought we have to have something that is as blatantly obvious a community event as

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possible. We are involving 40 plus different arts groups. So five performance spaces in

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the

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Robinshire Center is going to have a revolving door. Our performance is

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somewhere up in Lovettio, many years ago. The symphony should be the anchor of the festival

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weekend. We want to make sure that we perform music that everybody's going to know, and

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is doing some of the best-known selections of a symphonic repertoire.

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From the final movement, Oh to Joy of Beethoven Symphony No. 9, to doing American in Paris,

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to movements of the planets.

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If they have nothing else, if they've heard movies and soundtracks, they will know this

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music. So we want people to walk away feeling like, you know, the symphony is for me too.

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Any nonprofit could fail if it doesn't have the support of the community. We're getting

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enough affirmation for our people buying tickets to our concerts, for people who make

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their donations to the symphony on an annual basis. So the community you're saying to us,

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we want you here. You know, we're not begging people to