at House Red, 7403 W. Madison, Forest Park, IL
Come celebrate Valentine's Day while supporting your Symphony! On Sunday Feb 12 from 4-8:00PM, House Red Vinoteca welcomes you to an excursion of wine and chocolate pairings, elegant h'or doeurves, and scrumptious desserts. Robert Benson will be gracing the evening's festivities tickling the ivories with romantic favorities.
Cost per ticket/person is $35.00 and $20.00 is tax-deductible! They can be purchased through our box office weblink, or checks can be made payable to "SOPRF" at PO Box 3564, Oak Park IL.
Availability is limited so get your reservations in soon!
Our first annual Gala, benefitting the SOPRF was a smashing success! Dinner and dancing went hand in hand along with a silent auction to help benefit the symphony. Awards were presented as well. The Gala committee were so dedicated and worked tirelessly but it was Carole Benson who was awarded the Gala Angel Honor for the evening for her selfless efforts and hard work to make the evening so memorable.
We also awarded the "Unsung Hero" award to John Giura, a longtime patron and supporter of the SOPRF. And if we thought we surprised him, it was he who suprised us! He presented a challenge, that if the SOPRF could raise $50,000 this concert season, that he and the Audrey Love Charitable Foundation would match our funds 2:1. That is, for every dollar we raise, we get another for a potential $100,000.
So help us to reach this goal! We're currently at $15,000 from the proceeds resulting from the Gala, as well as the Brass Buddies Golf Outing (BIG thanks to Kirk Lundbeck & Bud Herseth) but still have quite a ways to reach this goal. If you've wondered when a good time would be to support your local symphony, this would be it! Please consider us when making your philanthropic donations, knowing that your dollar can go TWICE as far with us!
The SOPRF is proud to announce that the Illinois Council of Orchestras has awarded us with two of the their most prestigious awards; Conductor of the Year & Orchestra of the Year. In attendance at our choral concert on April 3rd was ICO's president Perry Fisher to present us with the awards.
Among some of the accomplishments acknowledged; community involvement & outreach, opportunities for youth, which included the PING program (Providing Instruments for the Next Generation), and innovation in programming, which included an Orchestra Hall performance of Mahler's Symphony of a Thousand.
The SOPRF is humbled by this recognition and are proud to be awarded with such an honor. Maestro Friedman shared his appreciation to the orchestra, "the members of the SOPRF most certainly could have gotten the Orchestra of the Year award without me, but I could not have gotten the Conductor of the Year award without you."
The PING! Mentoring Program serves to provide instruments, music lessons, and music enrichment opportunities to low-income students in Oak Park-River Forest, working in collaboration with public school Districts 90, 97 & 200.
PING! is for middle & high school students interested in receiving additional instruction on their chosen instrument. The program is taught by advanced high school students for middle school ones, and by adult musicians (some from the SOPRF!) for the high school students.
PING! is funded by generous contributions from members of our community, by grants from private foundations, by funding from the Oak Park Area Arts Council in partnership with the Villages of Oak Park, River Forest, Forest Park , and the Illinois Arts Council, and by donations from individual businesses.
To find out how you can help support this program, please call 708-524-5830 ext. 7464 or send an e-mail at pingoprf@gmail.com.