Weld Community Foundation 52 Fridays with the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra

Weld Community Foundation
January 31st, 2025
Greeley, CO

“We do a 𝘚𝘢𝘭𝘶𝘵𝘦 𝘵𝘰 𝘚𝘦𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘤𝘦 concert each year which, as you’d imagine, tends to be one of the more emotional events. I sometimes get to sit near the front and narrate, and I love it because I see the audience, I see their faces, I see the tears in their eyes. And after the concert is over, I often see them just sit there and contemplate. That’s powerful.

When people spend their discretionary income and their discretionary time, it needs to be valuable to them. It needs to provide something that they come away with that's bigger than themselves, that they feel part of something that has touched them with humanity, with joy, has taken them to places that are unique and special. Only music can do that. So, the power of the Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra is excellence, integrity, and service to the community.

Our mission is to inspire and enrich people through live orchestral music. That includes people that are at our concerts and those that are connected through our education and outreach. What separates us is the quality of our performances, and that our performances are fun, and our music is accessible, which means people will understand it, they will get it. They will gravitate to it, and it will inspire them.

For instance, we recently had an event called, 𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥: 𝘍𝘭𝘢𝘮𝘦𝘴 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘍𝘶𝘳𝘺. The theme was love—all about love but taking a look at it from many different aspects. The first piece was from a failed opera by Hector Berlioz. In almost every opera, someone falls in love with somebody, someone dies, someone kills somebody. So I mean, that's opera—it's drama—It's the love of that. Then we go to Tchaikovsky and we have a “fantasy overture”—it’s not a real overture; it’s a stand alone piece. It’s based on Romeo and Juliet, so there are two themes; there is love, of course, but then there is fear and fate. This piece interweaves those themes beautifully and everybody’s heard it—on elevators, in cars, on airplanes—they just don’t know it by name. From there, we go into the 𝘒𝘢𝘳𝘦𝘭𝘪𝘢 𝘚𝘶𝘪𝘵𝘦 by Jean Sibelius, and this is about love of country. It’s a love of countryside and what Karelia legends are about. And then we move into 𝘍𝘪𝘳𝘦𝘣𝘪𝘳𝘥, which is a ballet. It’s the story of Ivan who is lost in the forest and he comes across a glowing bird whose feathers have protective powers. There’s adventure, and he eventually falls in love. So in each of these pieces, we see love but we also see conflict and adventure.

With an event like this, we market it certain ways—this one was a love fest, but underneath, we’re talking about humanity. We’re exploring big questions: why do we wake up in the morning? You know, why do we do what we do? What we hope is that we have purpose in life and that we have love in life.

So we tend to have some very unique programming. Last year we had 𝘖𝘶𝘳 𝘉𝘭𝘶𝘦 𝘔𝘢𝘳𝘣𝘭𝘦 which was an immersive audio and visual experience with a 40-foot movie screen and images of Mother Earth all put together with the smells of the rainforest piped into the theater. This year, we have a debut for the electric cello. This event is titled, 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘏𝘶𝘮𝘢𝘯 𝘌𝘹𝘱𝘦𝘳𝘪𝘦𝘯𝘤𝘦, and it addresses issues of mental and behavioral health. We have many community partners for that one. And then, with the support of the City of Greeley, we will be performing a Latin concert next season. We use art as a way of connecting and bringing the community together.

There is also the component of trying to understand. We want to help people understand what they are listening to because that grows an attachment to classical music. All of our programming works toward this goal, but in particular our youth programs, like the youth orchestra and our Education Week.

We're really excited for our future. So we’re taking some measures now to ensure that the GPO is sustainable for generations to come, and that our kids and grandkids can experience live professional orchestral music locally and without barriers. We're in the middle of a capital campaign where we are looking to raise $2 million for an endowment that will allow us to continue to innovate and bring in nationally-known and world-renowned talent. We need to keep inspiring our future through investments in the youth orchestra—which has doubled in size in the last six months and includes children from Greeley, Johnstown, and Windsor. The endowment will also help us continue to explore live music applications in the health setting—like our electric cello concert. There’s interest in partnering with music therapists or nonprofits serving different populations. In fact, we just had 30 individuals from Arc of Northeast Colorado attend our concert on Saturday night.

The importance of music is that it connects people who don’t perceive their own commonalities. Music is for everyone.”

Left to right:

Lowell Graham, Music Director and Principal Conductor

Davis Harwell, Production Manager and Orchestra Librarian

Micayla Bellamy, Managing Director

Ben Barnhart, Executive Director

Greeley Philharmonic Orchestra

This post is part of the Weld Community Foundation’s 52 Fridays series.

The purpose of the series is to feature one nonprofit per week in a story-forward way as they work to "spread the good" in our region. We hope this series showcases the expansive and diverse richness of Weld and all the ways our nonprofits strengthen the bonds of our community.

You can make a contribution to this week's featured organization here: https://www.coloradogives.org/organization/GPO