strings director at the Marblehead/Salem School of Music,
and a violinist with the North Shore Philharmonic.
"They played for the fall concert, and a lot of them stayed
for the concert [afterward], and they have been talking about
it ever since," Offret says. Despite being enrolled in a music
school, she says that most of her students haven't been ex-
posed to much live orchestral music.
"That's one of the big reasons to do the partnership," she
says. "I find that once they're there, they love the experience
of live music."
Perhaps, as it did with Marra when he was a young boy,
seeing the North Shore Philharmonic will instill in those
young people a lifelong love and dedication to classical
music. And perhaps, they, and their parents, too, will feel the
same sense of grandeur that so many people feel who sit in
the audience and get to hear such a spectacular sound right in
their own community.
"They don't have to go to Boston. The programming is
wonderful," Leamon says. "It's like the hidden gem in their
backyard." nspo.org
Cape Ann Symphony
For such a relatively small area, the North Shore has an em-
barrassment of cultural riches: among them, the Cape Ann
Symphony.
The orchestra was founded in 1952 as the all-volunteer
Gloucester Civic Symphony Orchestra by Sam and Helen
Gordon, a couple from Gloucester. With those early, free con-
certs, the Gordons aimed to bring local audiences "the music
you love by the people you know."
"His wife was a violist, and he wanted to start an orchestra
so she could play in it," says Cape Ann Symphony musical
director and conductor Yoichi Udagawa. Today, it's a fully
professional orchestra that plays four concerts per season in
the newly built Manchester Essex Regional High School.
Music
ne
118
Photographs
by
David
Stotzer
Cape Ann
Conductor
Yoichi Udagawa
began an
orchestra for his
violist wife.
KJ NS Apr14 Symphony.indd 118 2/21/14 12:16 PM
