Everything old is new again. That adage stands true for the Paducah Symphony Orchestra, which is welcoming community members this weekend back to its original home, which now boasts a renovated performance space and music education classrooms.
PSO will host a ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday to officially open its new Symphony Hall, an auditorium that can hold nearly 700 people with permanent and temporary seating. The music group will also host a ticketed grand opening concert that will feature some of the first notes played in the space in over a quarter of a century.
Reece King, CEO of the Paducah Symphony Orchestra, said the move brings the organization back to its first home, where the group of professional musicians performed for 17 years after it was first established.
“This was an opportunity for us to come back home and come full circle and also give us extra space,” King said.
The building that now houses Symphony Hall first served as Augusta Tilghman High School when it opened its doors over 100 years ago. When Paducah Tilghman High School opened its doors in the 1950s, the former Augusta Tilghman building was converted to become the Walter Jetton Junior High School.
After the Paducah Symphony was established in 1979, Paducah City Schools offered the building for the orchestra to use. The building served as PSO’s home from 1980 to 1997, when King said the orchestra moved to the Paducah Tilghman Auditorium as the former Jetton school building fell further into disrepair – and while PSO waited for the Carson Center in downtown Paducah to finish construction.
In 2019, the Marian Group, a Louisville developer, made overtures to the PSO staff about the possibility of returning to the historic building, which was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1995. That idea eventually became The Dunlap Project, a development that included renovating the building, converting the former school into 40 apartments, rehabilitating the auditorium and transforming the basement into office and educational spaces for the local orchestra.
While PSO will continue to host its regular season performances at the Carson Center, King said Symphony Hall provides the group with a flexible space to hold additional smaller-scale concerts, including performances from PSO’s three choirs. King said the space could also allow for new offerings such as smaller-scale chamber music concerts and student recitals.
Under the stage of Symphony Hall sits offices for the organization’s staff and the PSO Academy, a space for private, individual music lessons. King said PSO staff felt there was a need in the community for high-level music instruction so that students no longer had to travel to area universities for similar levels of one-on-one teaching. The academy, which first welcomed students last fall, currently has 123 students enrolled for the spring semester.
“We really believe this is a game changer for the community,” King said. “It certainly expands our engagement with the community and we're engaged with families that we've never been associated with before, which is a great thing for the symphony, too.”
Affordability was also a factor for the new educational space. King said many of the students have been awarded partial or full scholarships, which he said helps expand access to learning opportunities for students and families who may otherwise not be able to afford them.
Looking forward, King said there are many possibilities for the types of events the new space could host. At the same time, the PSO leader said the organization wants to be sensible about how the facility is operated, and make sure it is prepared for all of the events it does choose to host.
Tickets for Saturday’s grand opening performance are available on the Paducah Symphony Orchestra’s website.
Editor’s note: Paducah Symphony Orchestra is an underwriter of WKMS.
