Timothée Chalamet did us a favor. Yes, that’s what I said. You may recall this young actor in a discussion with his fellow actor, Matthew McConaughey, laughing as he downplayed ever working in ballet or opera. Something good came from his misguided and misinformed words stating opera and ballet are dying art forms. Lump symphonic music into the mix, then step back and look at the firestorm his words generated amongst those of us who are patrons of the arts. The response on social media is easily 97% positive from people championing ballet and opera. He made us sit up and take notice of the state of the arts, and he made us recommit to keeping the arts alive. 

What does this have to do with volunteering with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra? Actually, quite a bit. The Symphony Volunteer Association has had a staggering increase in membership since our return to Powell Hall at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center; an increase of 75+ new members and growing weekly. These new members are college students, recent retirees, new residents to St. Louis, et cetera, and they are all reflecting the change in demographics of the patrons in the seats of the concert hall. People are coming for the first time, and people are returning after years of abstention. But this growth is proof that orchestral music is not dead; it’s not even on life support. It’s thriving! 

Live music will never be replaced by AI. Humans will continue to compose and perform providing a sound unable to be duplicated or replaced by technology. The St. Louis Symphony Orchestra will never be compromised or diminished in quality as long as there are patrons to appreciate their gift of music. And the members of the Symphony Volunteer Association will continue to be there to support the mission of the SLSO.  

Suzanne Seibel 

We just concluded another fantastic year of SVA Cocktails and Conversation. As a reminder, these are interactive Zoom events which began in 2021 and are still a highlight of our SVA calendar. It’s a convenient way to stay connected and meet so many wonderful members of our Symphony and staff…and you don’t even have to leave your home!  

In case you missed our 2025/26 lineup, here is a recap: 

We are getting ready to plan next season’s Cocktails and Conversation. If you have any special requests, please let us know…and most of all, don’t forget to zoom in and be a part of these magical musical moments!  

The Hospitality Committee was busy throughout the year baking and providing treats to the musicians, choruses, staff, ushers, stagehands, bartenders, and Youth Orchestra members in appreciation for all that they do to bring the power of music to the St. Louis community.  The committee began the year with a sumptuous breakfast brunch for the returning musicians and then scheduled different times throughout the year to focus on providing cookie treat bags to specific groups within the symphony team. Committee members baked their favorite nut-free cookie recipes and gathered for packaging sessions, which felt more like mini-parties filled with laughter and good conversation. As an old advertisement went, “Nothing says lovin’ like something from the oven”, and this committee is very pleased to share the love. 

Our Spring Membership Meeting Luncheon took place on Friday, May 8, 2026, at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center beginning with a social hour. Russo’s catered a delicious buffet lunch.  

SLSO oboe and English horn musician Cally Banham performed. Cally has been a member of the orchestra since 2006. She has appeared as a soloist with the SLSO many times, most recently in 2023. A native of Philadelphia, Cally graduated from Temple University and the Manhattan School of Music. She lives in Lafayette Square with her cats and is an environmentalist, foodie, and social dancer of tango, salsa, and rueda. 

It is so important for our members to be able to hear such beautiful musical pieces by our musicians up close and personal. 

In addition to this beautiful music performance, we also heard from our President and CEO Marie-Hélène Bernard, who spoke about the importance of Opera Theatre St. Louis and its relationship to the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra. 

The membership voted on new executive committee members as well as half of the committee chairs. Members also chose the volunteer opportunities they would like to participate in during the 2026/27 season. Annual surveys were available. 

Our final event of the year will be an Ice Cream Social. It will take place on August 5, 2026, in Kirkwood Park. This has been an annual event for many years and a great way to reconnect with friends as we kick off the new season. Please save the date and watch for your email invitation. 

The SVA Membership Engagement Team is chaired by Kathryn Snodgrass, who sends cards to members who have experienced a loss or disappointment in their lives or are celebrating a joyous occasion.

Kathryn is notified of these occasions by other SVA members, so please contact her at SVAEngagement@slso.org if you become aware of an important opportunity to reach out to a fellow volunteer.

The 2025/26 SLSO season continues to welcome a record number of new members to the Symphony Volunteer Association, 73 in total since the beginning of the season!

19 new members joined between January 23, 2026 and March 31, 2026:

Joined January 23–31, 2026

Joined in February 2026

Joined in March 2026

The reopening of Powell Hall at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center has seen the return of many longtime SLSO patrons as well as an influx of new music lovers. This season has also brought exciting and expanded volunteer opportunities for our members. We continue to need all the members we can get!

If you have any ideas on how to recruit new SVA members, please contact us at SVANewandProspective@slso.org. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Pick and Choose Committee is a flexible, “as-needed” group that provides support whenever specific needs arise, often on short notice. This committee is ideal for members with unpredictable schedules who find it difficult to commit to a regular volunteer routine. Our past activities have included stuffing envelopes, providing transportation for Youth Orchestra members, serving as backup ambassadors, and assisting with crowd management during holiday events. We send out a call for help as tasks come up; if you’re available to assist, that’s great, but there is no obligation. 

The Mentor committee is working with 85 new members who have joined SVA this season. Many have attended individual and group meetings with mentors and have volunteered at SLSO events.  We had our first Powell Hall meeting on Saturday, April 11 to compare notes and discuss new ideas. We need more mentors to welcome and educate the large number of new SVA members who joined during this season. For more information, and to join us, please contact SVAMentors@slso.org. 

The shuttles have turned into a thriving group of regulars. Both the hosts and the patrons have thoroughly enjoyed getting to know each other as they ride to Powell Hall for concerts this season. We hosted a special duo a few weeks back.

The Pearlines had this to say about a recent shuttle ride:

Because the “journey” is part of the experience of the concert, besides introductions and counting heads and such, it is our habit to share a bit about the concert, the SLSO and what they can expect, before we depart. We were doing some research on the SLSO website and came across an article about a patron who won the Picture the Music Award in 1998 for Scheherazade, who has been riding the shuttle, and was riding that night with us! We asked her as she was boarding if she would share that story to everyone and she graciously did. Her father was with her at the concert, and he also displayed, from his phone, the winning picture, prominently hanging in his living room.

The SLSO staff knew ahead of time that she was coming and placed flowers on her seat. What a great surprise! She is and will continue to be an SLSO season ticket holder and supporter!

The Discovery Committee has been working behind the scenes this season planning the SVA 100th Anniversary which we will begin celebrating the fall of 2026, and the re-opening of the Boutique. Both are exciting projects for the SVA and SLSO. 

The goals for our Anniversary celebratory year are to: 

A preview of the Anniversary events will be revealed at the May 8 membership meeting, and the formal Anniversary kickoff will be at the Fall 2026 Membership meeting. Many special events are being planned, and we hope all of you will participate. 

At our February 2026 Membership meeting, we announced the Merchandise Team/Boutique will be expanded and re-launched with the opening of the 2026/27 season in September. Many of you have volunteered this season and/or previous seasons. Thank you for your help over the years! We are hoping you will be re-joining the team in the fall. 

With the re-launch, the SVA will be taking responsibility for the management and operation of this expanded program. In addition to the traditional volunteer roles we had previously for sales, cashiers, etc., the SVA will have additional responsibilities for managing, planning, buying and displaying merchandise, scheduling volunteers, reporting profit and losses, and more to launch a successful, profitable new “boutique” for the SLSO. 

If you or someone you know are or could be interested in some of these roles, please reach out to Debbie Dillon (SVADiscovery@SLSO.org) and Andrea Biske (andreab@slso.org). We will be expanding this team and will have specialized roles and responsibilities to help us establish and operate a new “shopping” experience for those visiting Powell Hall. 

If you have past retail/gift shop experience and are willing to share it and any lessons learned, we would love to hear from you as well—even if you have not worked in the SVA Boutique.

March showed greater volunteer participation for the month’s 16 concerts needing Merchandise coverage. Total volunteer hours were 134!

Karen and Christine continue to welcome a few new committee members each month. As plans for the new merchandise approach take shape, we expect a robust team next season.

The March 6th Coffee Concert went very well. Discussions continued with the SVA Board and SLSO leadership about occasional problems with self-service beverages, and we now are authorized to provide four additional volunteers to assist with the beverages, with the goal of minimizing spillage. 

For the April 24th Coffee Concert, we provided the extra four volunteers, to support the “coffee service assistants.” The Coffee Concert Committee’s “backup volunteer list” for this concert came in handy. 

In retrospect for this season: 

Looking forward to the 2026/27 Coffee Concert Season! 

The Education Hosts team helped with two very different, well-attended concerts in February and March. The Music Without Boundaries concerts, performed on February 25 and 26, showcased music from around the world, featuring Hindustani singer Maya Anand, Persian American guitarist Farshid Etniko, erhu player Olivia Zhang, and Bosnian accordionist Amir Salesevic. It was an amazing concert! Our team had its own challengers with STL’s cold and windy February winter—big kudos to our team members who were outside in the cold, bundled up and greeting the school buses.

We also assisted with the Link Up: The Orchestra Rocks on March 2 and 3. This participatory concert has students playing their recorder or string instrument with the SLSO. This concert was so much fun with students clapping, dancing, and playing along with the symphony—it was so interactive for the entire audience.

This was the first time we saw students bringing in violins and cellos, as well as recorders. We had lovely weather the first day and then fought a horrible rainstorm the following day. However, we managed to get the students and teachers in and out of the building safely. Several volunteers were drenched in the process, but we all made it through the day! We never know how the weather will be, but the dedication of our team is simply AMAZING.

Tiny Tunes: Giraffes Can’t Dance is our last set of education concerts on May 13, 14, and 15. This highly interactive program designed for pre-K and kindergarten students features Gerald the Giraffe as he overcomes adversity, discovers his talents, and finds music that inspires him to dance. Beloved music from Camille Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals brings the story of Giraffes Can’t Dance to life as students make music with the SLSO. We’re calling on our Education Hosts team, as well as Instrument Playground members. This event needs lots of hands-on volunteers and is open to those who have completed the background check. Please contact us if you are interested. 

On March 25, Express the Music and Picture the Music had a combined awards ceremony. The students enjoyed seeing their projects displayed in Powell Hall.  If you would like to see the students’ creative projects, go to slso.org/express. 

Picture the Music

Picture the Music had a successful award ceremony on Wednesday 3/25 with around 700 people in attendance to celebrate the work of the 100

young artists whose work won out of over 400 submissions. The artwork was inspired by Contact by Kevin Puts, and we were lucky enough to have Kevin attend the ceremony and talk about how he was inspired to create Contact. The art was displayed in Powell Hall starting on March 19 and moved to the St Louis Art Museum on March 30. There it was displayed for two weeks before moving to the planetarium at the St. Louis Science Center where it was displayed for an additional two weeks. 

The new era of Powell Hall Tours is actively underway. The PH Tours team conducted 13 tours (8 public, 5 private) during the first quarter of 2026. We have taken 645 reservations (495 public/150 private) and 584 (438 public/146 private) guests have gone on a tour with our 20+ SVA tour guides. One special VIP tour was conducted at the end of March for accomplished Icelandic pianist and SLSO guest artist, Vikingur  Ólafsson. 

Most of the public tour dates are selling out at a capacity of 60 guests. The cost of a public tour ticket is $10 and reservations can be made online or by calling the SLSO Box Office. Private tours may be arranged directly with Kristin Lamprecht, Director of Guest Experience. Several tour dates have already been scheduled for April through July. We anticipate giving tours year round. 

For additional information about PH Tours, please contact Group Leader Becky Brown, SVATours@slso.org. 

After an outstanding second concert in which the St. Louis Symphony Youth Orchestra collaborated for the first time with the St. Louis Symphony Chorus on Gustav Holt’s The Planets, the last YO concert of the season on May 31 will feature YO concerto competition winner Samuel Wenger-Stickel performing Samuel Barber’s Violin Concerto. The concert concludes with Jean Sibelius’s Symphony No. 1, capping off a season of high-level performances delivered by our talented YO musicians.  

Our volunteers coordinated with YO Manager Alfredo DeLeon to ensure the pre-concert meals for each concert ran smoothly, and that everyone, including YO Conductor Samuel Hollister, received a box lunch. Looking forward, our volunteers will be put into service at YO final auditions in June, where volunteers will help with the audition process, helping to welcome and register the auditioning musicians and escorting them as they make their way through the audition process at Powell Hall at the Jack C. Taylor Music Center.  

Peggy was born on July 23, 1938, in Elk City, Oklahoma to Cleo Walter and Ruth Walter (née Cribbs). 

Peggy’s life was truly complete. Her greatest joy was her family to whom she was a constant source of strength, wisdom, and encouragement. She was a committed community leader, having served terms as Alderman and Mayor of Town and Country, Missouri. She was an ardent supporter of higher education, having earned multiple degrees of higher education herself. 

Peggy embraced life with enthusiasm and grace. She was an avid reader whose curiosity never waned, an enthusiastic traveler who delighted in exploring new places and cultures, and a passionate lover of the arts. Her appreciation for music and culture found lasting expressions in her philanthropy. As a long-time board member and generous benefactor of The Sheldon Concert Hall & Galleries, she believed deeply in supporting institutions that enrich community life and bring beauty and inspiration to others. Peggy was a long-time member of the St. Louis Symphony Volunteer Association. 

Peggy will be remembered for her intelligence, kindness, civic spirit, and steadfast devotion to those she loved. Her legacy lives in her family, in the community she helped shape, and in the cultural institutions she so generously supported. She will be deeply missed. 

Your General Board consists of the Executive Committee; Committee Chairs and Vice-Chairs, who fall under one of the three VPs; and Team Leads, whose groups take on recurring tasks within certain committees.   

All these leaders are available, via their “official” SLSO emails, to welcome you into their committees/teams, answer questions, and generally provide resources to enrich your SVA experience.  All Execs, Chairs and Team Leads have SLSO emails, as listed below.  Vice-Chairs do not have SLSO emails but are listed below for completeness.