State Symphony

While long-established orchestras were striving last week to balance their next season's budget (see above), in North Carolina a novel symphonic venture was having its start. North Carolinians wanted an orchestra of their own. No single city was affluent enough to support a full-fledged one alone but in the university town of Chapel Hill a group of men headed by Geologist Joseph Hyde Pratt had the idea of organizing a State Symphony,/- one which would visit and be backed by several communities. They approached Composer Lamar Stringfield, a native Carolinian flautist teaching in the University music department. Among his teachers were Georges Barrere and Henry Hadley (conducting). The North Carolina sponsors asked Mr. Stringfield to assemble an orchestra, conduct an experimental concert at Chapel Hill.

As a State-wide campaign for 30,000 sponsors progressed last week, a definite season was forecast with Composer Stringfield the choice for conductor. At the trial concert three weeks ago Mr. Stringfield's performance gave great impetus to the State-symphony idea. His music was spirited, well-knit in spite of limited rehearsal. His debonair manner is as impressive as any imported foreigner's. Otto Hermann Kahn telegraphed congratulations. North Carolinians are particularly proud of Mr. Stringfield's musical allegiance to his home soil. He has studied and conducted in the North but his composition which won a 1928 Pulitzer

Prize was "From a Southern Mountain." Further evidence of the research he has done with local folk music is his more recent Mountain Song, an opera which has to do with a clan of fighting moonshiners.

/-The two-year-old Indianapolis Symphony aims to become an Indiana State Symphony but so far it is a city enterprise.

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