Losses for symphony sound a sour note for Everett

Thinking about the Everett Symphony Orchestra’s sad predicament, I hear music in my head. It’s not the sweet sound of classical strings. On my mind is Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi.”

You know the song, the one about how “they paved paradise and put up a parking lot.” These are the lyrics — “Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone” — that accompany my thoughts about the beleaguered symphony.

Wednesday’s article by Herald arts writer Theresa Goffredo told troubling news. Except for tonight’s “American Idols” concert at 8 p.m. at the Everett Civic Auditorium, the financially strapped Everett Symphony has canceled the rest of its season. It has given up its downtown Everett headquarters for space at Everett Mall.

Sadder still, longtime Everett Symphony conductor and music director Paul-Elliott Cobbs is leaving the orchestra. Goffredo reported that declining ticket sales and donations forced the organization to cancel contracts for Cobbs and its musicians.

Here’s an admission that may ring a familiar bell with many around here. I love the notion of living in a place that has its own symphony orchestra. Yet in the nearly 30 years I’ve been in Everett, I haven’t supported the Everett Symphony. It’s a soul-searching week for this self-described arts lover.

I can’t count the number of Everett AquaSox games I’ve seen. We make it to Everett Silvertips games. Already, I’ve seen the Washington Stealth play lacrosse in the team’s first season in Everett. I go all over to see concerts. I saw Neil Young at Everett’s Comcast Arena, Bruce Springsteen at KeyArena in Seattle, and Lyle Lovett at the Chateau Ste. Michelle Winery in Woodinville.

In almost 30 years, I have seen the Everett Symphony only a few times. Twice, I’ve seen the orchestra perform “The Nutcracker” with the Olympic Ballet Theatre. And once, back in the 1990s, I went to the orchestra’s “Symphonic Rock” show, featuring Bill Whitbeck’s classic rock band. I’m embarrassed to say, it took an orchestral rendition of “Rock Around the Clock” and a Beach Boys medley to get me to the symphony.

Don Speirs, of Everett, goes to several Everett Symphony concerts each season. In years past, he worked with some symphony musicians while involved with a community theater group at the Historic Everett Theatre.

“It’s a prestige thing for our community. Having an orchestra puts us on the map,” said Speirs. “Bellevue has their own orchestra, Tacoma and Spokane have theirs. We’re the right size, but we’re seen as a blue-collar, lunch-pail type of town that doesn’t have culture.”

Speirs is unhappy seeing the Everett Symphony leave downtown. “It’s a visible loss to the community. It says something about a community, that it can’t support an orchestra,” he said.

Speirs believes that more pop concerts, broader marketing and perhaps summer symphony concerts in parks would help introduce the Everett Symphony to a wider audience and a new generation.

“For every straight classical concert, they should do two or three pop concerts,” he said.

Longtime symphony-goer Linda Vandree is also saddened by the season’s abrupt end and the loss of Cobbs. “We’ve watched him over the years. He was a blessing,” she said of the conductor.

For more than 20 years, Vandree and her husband, John, have been Everett Symphony season ticket holders. They were stunned to see a smaller audience when this season opened.

“There were so many empty seats. It just broke my heart,” Vandree said. “I think everybody has cut back — and we are, too. But we still said that’s something we want to support. People aren’t able to support it in bigger ways,” she said.

Unlike Speirs, Vandree wouldn’t want many more pop concerts. “A symphony really is classical music, and I think the Everett Symphony is excellent. They’ve gone from being a community symphony to be very well respected,” she said.

Even those of us who never attend the symphony know that. After all, the Everett Symphony Orchestra has toured Europe and played New York’s Carnegie Hall.

“I’m just so sad,” Vandree said. “It’s just a treasure.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460, muhlstein@heraldnet.com.