EVERETT – Start spreading the news: The Everett Symphony Orchestra will play New York City’s Carnegie Hall in June 2006.
“To me, it’s the biggest deal there ever was with the symphony,” said violinist and symphony personnel manager Janalene Simpson.
Simpson started playing with the symphony as a high school student 56 years ago and is its longest-playing member.
She said she’s been on two major trips with the symphony, to Vienna in 1996 and to Italy in 2001, but Carnegie Hall will be something extra special.
“Playing on the opera stage of Vienna was hair-raising, but this is in my own country. This is here,” she said. “It’s very prestigious.”
Longtime conductor and music director Paul-Elliott Cobbs was preparing for a performance and could not be reached Friday afternoon.
Carnegie Hall is named after Andrew Carnegie, who paid for its construction. On May 5, 1891, the hall’s opening night, Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky conducted a concert.
The hall has been celebrated for its acoustics and for attracting many of the world’s best soloists, ensembles and conductors.
After the last Europe trip, Cobbs sent a recording of the symphony to officials at Carnegie Hall. They must have liked what they heard because they invited the Everett musicians to play there.
Local performers have been invited to Carnegie in the past, but the last time a full musical group from Snohomish County went was the Arlington High School choir in 2003.
Upon receiving the invitation, Cobbs had the orchestra vote on whether it wanted to go, she said.
Simpson said many of the orchestra’s almost 70 members are already talking about saving up for the trip to the nation’s premier classical music venue.
“We all know it’s expensive to travel and do things like that,” she said. “Thank goodness we know it now, to have that time to be prepared for it.”
Reporter Jennifer Warnick: 425-339-3429 or jwarnick@heraldnet.com.
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