A SPIRITED SYMPHONY
Denise Wilson of the Scottsdale Symphonic Orchestra is bringing orchestral music to the masses.
Denise Wilson is a woman of two passions. Though she spent 20 years in the aviation industry as a flight instructor and professional pilot, her first love was music.
It all started in junior high, when a teacher selected Wilson out of the pool of clarinet players to learn the oboe.
“By high school, I could play well enough to join a youth orchestra. That was the first time I was exposed to orchestral music, and I fell in love with it,” Wilson says. “What made it so special is that the entire orchestra was made up of young musicians just like me that loved this music and devoted whatever free time we had to it.”
And now, after retiring from flying and selling three of her aviation businesses, Wilson—who has a degree in oboe performance from the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music—has found a way to get back to her musical roots.
“When I moved to Scottsdale, I had the pleasure of playing with top-notch community orchestras such as the Chandler Symphony and the Tempe Symphony. I felt like Scottsdale deserved to have a high-caliber orchestra as well, a place where our musicians would feel welcomed, respected, and have an outlet to perform at a high artistic level,” she says.
Last year, Wilson founded the Scottsdale Symphonic Orchestra (www.scottsdalesymphonicorchestra.org), a nonprofit orchestra of over 70 professionally trained musicians that puts on six performances per season at the Scottsdale Center for the Performing Arts.
Since day one, Wilson’s goal has been to increase the accessibility of orchestral music, offering free entry to veterans and those unable to afford the ticket price. Looking forward, she hopes to provide scholarships for college students studying music performance in addition to performing free concerts at schools and senior living facilities.
“Some people find our concerts a great way to escape our ‘always-on’ technological world, and others are so deeply moved by the depth of beauty in the music that it changes them profoundly,” she says. “I love finding ways to help newcomers and seasoned concertgoers alike discover what music means to them.”