West Kelowna: 50th Anniversary of the Okanagan Symphony is Golden Midsummer Magic Music and Wine Gala Celebration at Mission Hill Family Estate
The Okanagan Symphony is celebrating their 50th year with a gala benefit this weekend, July 17, at Mission Hill Family Estate winery. The most substantial fundraising activity for the OSO of the year, the evening regularly raises about $80,000 annually of their $800,000 budget. The largest performing arts organization in BC’s interior, the funding helps support the approximately 50 musicians, a conductor, and guest artists.
Originally founded as a community orchestra, the OSO began as a fledgling group of 24 musicians who paid for the privilege of performing under the auspices of a night school class at Penticton High School in the autumn of 1959. With no live symphonic music available at that time between Vancouver and Calgary, a small group of amateur musicians would come together from the surrounding region with the resolute support of locals Hugh and Eva Cleland of Penticton and Wilbur and Mabel Hill of Westbank. Conductor William Bertsch would drive from Vancouver is his 1949 Austin camping along the way with his young wife for the weekend practices, with locals pitching in to help feed and house them all. The Orchestra’s first concert performance included Gershwin’s popular Rhapsody in Blue, along with selections from Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Bach, which were performed in March 1960 in Kelowna, Penticton, Revelstoke and Vernon with a budget that year of only $1625.
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