Join the Orchestra
Local musicians are welcome to join the orchestra. Our musicians came from a variety of backgrounds and experience levels: many of our symphony members played in college, several have degrees in music, one member began learning as an adult, and one musician learned violin in our strings program and has a child in our strings program today. There is no audition required to join the orchestra. The Itasca Symphony Orchestra performs three concerts each year at the Wilcox Theater in the Reif Center in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. In the eight to nine weeks leading up to each performance, the ISO rehearses on Monday nights from 6:30-8:30 pm in the band room of the Robert J. Elkington Middle School in Grand Rapids. Our complete rehearsal schedule is listed on the Calendar on our website. Please use the Contact page on our website to email any questions, requests for more information, or to tell us that you plan to join the ISO!
Keith Swanson, Symphony Conductor
Conductor Keith Swanson, orchestra musicians and IOSP staff celebrated his 20th anniversary with the ISO in May of 2012. As a graduate of the University of Minnesota (UMD), he recently retired as the Director of Music at Hermantown High School. He also has conducted the UMD Symphony Orchestra and orchestras for the Northland Opera Theater Experience and Colder by the Lake. As an avid opera fan and Music Director of Duluth’s Lyric Opera of the North (LOON), he has conducted for productions of Offenbach’s Tales of Hoffman, Mozart’s Magic Flute, Britten’s Midsummer Night’s Dream, Handel’s Semele, Menotti’s Amahl and the Night Visitors, Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi, Mascagni’s Cavalleria Rusticana and Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado. Once each summer you may also catch him playing French Horn in the Coleraine City Band under the direction of ISO’s trombone player, Tom Patnaude. You may also engage him in any discussion about the Minnesota Twins or Vikings.
Musicians
Violin I
Mary LaPlant, concertmaster
Kristine Arntson
Sarah Kowitz
Katy Hafar
Becky Kuntz
Violin II
Amanda Wirta
Cheryl Louis
Viola
Jesse Davis
Cello
Becky Loomis
Elise Campbell
Elise Sperling
Rachelle Nelson
Flute
Aaron Swanson
KirstenSiegle
Lila Dezelske
Clarinet
Jan McKinney
Tara Makinen
Oboe
Kim Young
Bass
Darrol Schmidt
Tuba
Phil Kneeland
Tympani
Peter Kneeland
Bassoon
Suzanne Allen
French Horn
Deena Skaja
Heidi Wick
Hannah Erickson
Trumpet
Carmen Heinecke
Cassie Thuen
Michael Wourms
Trombone
Thomas Patnaude
Ellen Bogardus-Szymaniak
David Grosland