Statements
Mission
Gateway Chamber Orchestra enriches lives through innovative concerts, distinctive recordings, and inspiring educational programs.
Background
The Gateway Chamber Orchestra (GCO) is a nationally-recognized cultural institution conducted by Gregory Wolynec. With a home at the Mabry Concert Hall on the campus of Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, and a dedication to producing digital content, the GCO strives to provide world-class music to the residents of Middle Tennessee and beyond.
The ensemble debuted in the fall of 2008 and has grown into a classically-modeled chamber orchestra comprised of leading symphony players, recording musicians and college faculty who delight in bringing their shared passion for the world's greatest music to the community. Most GCO concerts also typically feature internationally-recognized guest artists.
The GCO combines beloved masterworks, overlooked gems, and works by underrepresented composers to illuminate a vast range of music.
Impact
The GCO is the only professional classical ensemble based in Clarksville and one of the very few active in Tennessee. The Clarksville community is now closely associated with and invested in the GCO, which enhances the community's cultural identity. We continually collaborate with prominent professional musicians from Tennessee, including multiple recipients of the TAC Individual Artist Fellowship.
Since 2010, GCO musicians have entertained and educated thousands of Middle Tennessee students with hands-on outreach programs designed around upcoming Masterworks programming. These programs, known as the Gateway Chamber Experience, involve brief performances by GCO artist-teachers, engaging commentary and a side-by-side performance activity based on the upcoming program. Students and their directors are then able to attend the GCO performance with free tickets. In 2019, GCO musicians made their first Musicians in the School tour of Middle Tennessee Elementary schools reaching over 5000 students . This weeklong tour featured a narrated children's story with musical selections used to accompany the tale.
Our 2021-22 season launched in December, much later than our typical season schedules due to the COVID-19pandemic. Our first in-person concert series, the launch of our new annual production of The Nutcracker (with music by Tchaikovsky and Duke Ellington) in collaboration with, and featuring guest artists from, Nashville Ballet was a resounding success. One of our two performances was sold out, with the other very nearly sold out as well, indicating our audience's strong interest in a return to live programming.
The Sounds of Home Chorus (SOH) was established in 2018 with the support of TAC's Tennessee Military, Veterans & the Arts program to engage active duty, veterans and their families in the arts through choral performance. In addition to community performances, such as caroling at the Tennessee State Veterans' Home, SOH is a featured performer in America's Haydn Festival performing a major work with the GCO and the Gateway Chorale.
In earlier seasons, we featured our multi-media Family Series programs, a weekend concert in Clarksville with long-standing GCO collaborator author Anna Celenza for a program based on her original children's books and stories. The concert was preceded by supplemental hands-on activities: an instrumental "petting zoo' and a correlated craft. Subsequently, we held abbreviated performances of the program the following Monday to 1,200 local elementary students in Clarksville.
In lieu of our traditional activities during the 2020-21 season, we created a digital educational video series titled Magical Music & Timeless Tales to accommodate safety measures related to the COVID-19 pandemic. This series of 12 videos pairs elementary music teachers with GCO musicians to present classic children's literature and stories with engaging music. Classroom teachers narrated the story and created lesson plans and coordinating materials for use both in school or remote settings. GCO musicians selected and performed works chosen to illustrate the text and introduce students to works by established masters and underrepresented composers from a variety of cultures. We provided this series without charge to our two local public school systems: Clarksville-Montgomery County School System (CMCSS) and Williamson County Schools (WCS). Our hope is to produce a second season of this video series in the future, with the same distribution plan: providing to CMCSS and WCS free of charge, and making available for purchase to patrons, individual educators, and other school systems via our website.
Needs
To ensure continued growth and success, the Gateway Chamber Orchestra needs: 1) Enhanced infrastructure in the form of part-time office staff and significantly greater expenditures on marketing in order to continue the growth trajectory of the GCO, and 2) Corporate sponsorship and individual donations to help sustain our concert series, family and children's concerts and educational outreach programs.
CEO Statement
As Music Director of the GCO, I have been amazed by the artistic trajectory of the ensemble. From the downbeat of our first rehearsal in 2008, in Schoenberg's daunting first Chamber Symphony no less, I think we all knew we were experiencing something unique and special. This fascinating mix of kindred spirits has the opportunity to gather a handful of times per year in literature that is equal parts familiar and totally foreign to produce some of the most exhilarating moments of my professional life. Reading Jerry Dubins review of our 'Wind Serenades' disc, we found the ensemble chosen "out of the pack" above leading ensembles from Vienna, London and New York - this for a start-up based firmly in Middle Tennessee. World-renowned flutist William Bennett was astonished at our eagerness to collaborate in a fashion the he felt rivaled the English Chamber Orchestra. Tackling works from the massive (Mahler's 'Song of the Earth') to the youthful (Britten's 'Simple Symphony') has been done with a healthy dose of classical tradition (LOTS of Haydn, Mozart and Schubert) and works that have stretched all of our boundaries (Henry Brant and the previously mentioned Schoenberg come to mind.) Through wide ranging educational efforts of rolling up our sleeves to head out into the local schools and visit students, as well as collaborating with artists of other disciplines to create an entirely new genre of family entertainment, we have come to realize the importance of developing a love for great art in students of all ages. Classical music is a wondrous form of art and I am constantly reminded of its power when students have an opportunity to interact with it in real life. Filling Mabry Hall in Clarksville for successive concerts twice in a row on a Monday morning is exhausting, but never in that moment. Seeing students react to the Tortoise movement from Saint-Saens' 'Carnival of the Animals' while watching their own drawing come to life on a 30-foot by 30-foot screen is truly priceless. I hope you will help us as we bring world-class art to the Middle Tennessee community. Recently, we were able to identify a need for our military families in and around Montgomery County. With assistance from the Tennessee Arts Commission, we have been able to create a new choral ensemble that aims to engage active military, veterans and their families with music making. In a literacy-based approach, members of our military community are taught to develop a life skill in the arts that also serve as both a form of artistic expression and therapeutic activity.
Service Categories |
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| Primary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - Symphony Orchestras |
| Secondary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - Music |
| Tertiary Category: | Arts, Culture & Humanities - Arts Education |
Areas Served
The Gateway Chamber Orchestra performs concerts in Clarksville, Tennessee. Through educational outreach programs, the GCO brings its musicians to perform for and engage in hands-on activities with students at schools in Montgomery, Davidson, and surrounding counties.
| TN - Montgomery |
| TN - Davidson |
| TN - Houston |
| TN - Stewart |
| TN - Robertson |
| TN - Cheatham |
| TN - Williamson |
