The West Plains Area Community Orchestra, consisting of players from the greater West Plains area including Alton, Birch Tree, Mountain Grove, Wasola, and Willow Springs, as well as Arkansans from Gassville, Melbourne, and Mountain Home, provides area music lovers with an opportunity to play or to hear live orchestral music. They rehearse Tuesday nights at 7PM in the West Plains High School band room, and present two public concerts a year in the Civic Center Theater.

For information about playing, hearing, or supporting the orchestra, contact Connie Moon at 417-256-3785 or moonpeople@townsqr.com. The Community Orchestra is sponsored in part by the West Plains Council on the Arts, with financial assistance from the Missouri Arts Council, a state agency.

The Community Orchestra 2006 season opened with Music of the Heartland, Old and New at their Winter Concert in January in the West Plains Civic Center Theater. Included in the program was music from our American heartland as well as some classics from the European heartland. Steven Amundson, composer and conductor of the St. Olaf Orchestra, wrote Sola Gratia (Grace Alone), a beautiful meditation using themes from Amazing Grace. Also on the program are Brahms’ Hungarian Dance, Berlioz’ Hungarian March, Mozart’s Titus Overture with guest conductor Lewis Rozelle, Holst’s “Jupiter” from The Planets, depicting joy and jollity and featuring a famous hymn tune, America the Beautiful by Samuel A. Ward in a fine concert arrangement by Alfred Reed, and seasonal favorites. 

The orchestra, with its largest roster since its founding in 1999, is giving us a “taste of St. Olaf” throughout the season. St. Olaf College, in Northfield, Minnesota, brought their renowned St. Olaf Band to West Plains last January. Receiving them with an enthusiastic full house, the community enjoyed the variety of music. “The community has a chance to hear some more of St. Olaf’s wonderful music this year,” says orchestra director Connie Moon. Orchestra members will accompany the West Plains High School Concert Choir, December 18, on Stay With Us by Egil Hovland, a piece frequently heard in the St. Olaf Christmas Festival. For the spring concert, the orchestra will perform a brand new piece, Carolina Folk Dream, by St. Olaf Band conductor Timothy Mahr. “It was premiered this May in South Carolina,” says Moon. “As far as I know, we’re only about the second orchestra to play it. It’s exciting for the orchestra to be able to communicate with live composers in the process of working on a lot of this music.”