In Wednesday’s (3/2) Wartburg Cedar Falls Courier (Iowa), Melody Parker writes, “At the close of the Wartburg Community Symphony Orchestra’s season on April 16, Janice Wade will put down one power tool—her baton—and pick up another, a band saw or perhaps a circular saw. Wade, music director and conductor, is retiring from Wartburg College and the symphony after 24 years and hopes to indulge one of her favorite hobbies, woodworking. … It will be Wade’s 126th concert with the symphony. She is the longest-serving conductor in the symphony’s 58-year history and the first female conductor. ‘I’ve been here 24 years and that’s a long time. I decided that retiring was a good thing to do. It gives the college a chance at a fresh start,’ Wade said. For nearly a quarter century, Wade has planned each concert from music to marketing, as well as arranging guest artists and rehearsing and conducting the orchestra. … In the past 24 years, WCSO has commissioned five new works by composer Linda Robbins Coleman and secured the ‘Ford Made in America’ project from the [League of American Orchestras], featuring the Iowa premiere of a new piece by Joan Tower, ‘America.’ ”
Posted March 7, 2011
