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By DEREK REDD
Maestro John Devlin, the music director and conductor of the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra, loves the fact that the position he holds in Wheeling exists at all.
Very few communities of Wheeling's size can claim as successful and as robust of an orchestra as the Friendly City can. They may not have a concert hall like the Capitol Theatre to house one. They may not have the infrastructure. They may not have the community support.
So Devlin understands how fortunate he is that Wheeling has embraced its symphony orchestra as it has for so many years, and he wants to repay that support by making as significant of an impact as possible.
It comes back to one of the mottos he lives by, one he learned from one of his conducting mentors, Marin Alsop, who served for many years as music director for the Baltimore Symphony. She said to Devlin, "Bloom where you are planted."
"What she said is so many conductors are looking towards their next step, their next job, thinking whatever I have now is a platform to the next thing," he said. "I’m not saying that I’ve mastered this, everyone thinks about their future, but working as hard as possible to create the best culture and community around your orchestra matters deeply to me.
"Let’s do as beautiful work as possible here in Wheeling, West Virginia," he added. "I’m proud to be here and to have this be my musical home."
Part of that work is creating a diverse lineup of performances, which celebrate the classic aspects of symphonic music while also offering patrons a taste of the unexpected. Sometimes, that comes in the same concert, as found in the 2022-23 season's opening night and last year's Independence Day concert.
The 2022-23 season opened with world-renowned cellist Yo Yo Ma, along with a project Devlin commissioned featuring composer Evan Meier and Washington D.C.-based hip-hop artist Christylez Bacon. The symphony and hip-hop also merged on Independence Day when local artist Isaiah Keez joined the symphony for a performance. That concert also included local group Eli and the Mojo Kings.
Devlin also likes using the symphony as an engine for discussion. In the 2021-22 season, the finale surrounded a discussion between race, politics and music and included Ron Scott and Rabbi Joshua Lief.
"We're an apolitical organization. We are here for everyone in our city," Devlin said. "But that doesn’t mean that we can’t bring different types of people together to talk about what matters to them. And I think that that’s a very interesting place to be at the intersection of a lot of interesting people and discussions and organizations. That helped create the fabric of our city where the symphony is definitely one of the most visible entities that does that work."
Devlin and his wife Camille have loved their time in Wheeling as Devlin works through his fourth year as the symphony's music director and conductor. There are treasures throughout. But one of the things Devlin treasures the most is the support the Wheeling Symphony Orchestra receives from the community.
So many groups step up to make each season successful, he said. They offer venues in which the symphony can perform or the infrastructure to broadcast those performances. People step up to volunteer with each concert.
"You can talk about the sense of a small town where people care about you, but that’s really what sticks for me is that I walk down the street and there’s a lot of people who donate or care about the orchestra that ask how they can help," Devlin said. "And then they really do follow through and help."