THE WICHITA EAGLE
| Saturday,
June 11, 1994
Section: MAIN NEWS Edition: CITY Page:
1A TODAY'S
PASTUREFUL OF MUSIC WILL FULFILL WOMAN'S DREAM
CHASE COUNTY In Jane Koger's dream, there was a symphony orchestra, a pasture and a sky. ''I
didn't see port-a-potties. I didn't see the need for thousands of dollars.
I didn't see first aid. I didn't see security. I didn't see anything,"
says the rancher. "I mean, dreamers don't." |
| The
dream turns real today, when the concert "Symphony on
the Prairie," featuring a 60-piece women's orchestra, takes
place on Koger's 6,000-acre cattle ranch in the Flint Hills.
Woodstock it's not. Deborah Freedman, conductor of the St. Joseph Symphony in Missouri and the founder of the Maryland Women's Symphony, will lead the orchestra in outdoor-flavored works by Aaron Copland and Libby Larsen, as well as a special arrangement of "Home on the Range" and Joan Tower's apt "Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman." The union musicians, most of whom made rehearsals Wednesday and Friday in Kansas City, are coming from as far away as Chicago and Indiana; they include Susan Slaughter, principal trumpet with the St. Louis Symphony. Koger, who can see where her great-grandfather homesteaded from the pasture chosen to be the concert site, has turned up in recent years in William Least Heat-Moon's book "PrairyErth" as well as in Vogue and Atlantic Monthly and on CBS, drawing attention with her Prairie Women Adventures and Retreat. A short, sturdy woman with wavy strawberry-blond hair, Koger strikes you instantly as someone born to run things. You see it in the sure way she maneuvers her Jeep over the flinty road between her headquarters and the concert pasture. And you can hear it in the determined drill she puts an interviewer through: "What's the angle on this?" "You're not going to say where this is, are you?" "Say it's in Lyon County and make everybody think it's an error." Koger's concern is crowd control. Although invitations to "Symphony on the Prairie" and the call for contributions went out weeks ago to as far away as Wichita and Lawrence, Koger is firm about wanting the event to be, above all, a gift to the 3,000 residents of Chase County. You need a ticket to attend. And the last of the free tickets went out Wednesday. Expected crowd: 3,500. Why an orchestra of all women? Koger gets impatient with such queries, which are usually focused on her all-women ranch. "It's like, 'Well, DUH!' " she says. On the ranch, "having women do it it's empowering for all women." She had the symphony dream for a long time, and her friend Dora Robinson helped her get serious about it last year. Joan Briccetti, who was general manager of the St. Louis Symphony for 12 years and to whom Tower's fanfare is dedicated, co-produced the concert. The Chase County Arts Council has been accepting contributions to cover the event's $27,250 cost, but so far only $6,000 has been raised. ''Really, I feel like my gift has been to help organize it and to allow it to be held on my property," Koger says, at a table in the Prairie Women bunkhouse, after a morning spent in Lawrence trying to get the printing of the programs just right. "But the tradeoff to that is, the liability is incredible." A stage was erected Friday, and a generator and sound system are being brought in. Lawrence's Free State Brewery will sell food in one of several tents in the pasture. Covered wagons and golf carts will carry concertgoers the half-mile from the parking area to the site. Koger, whose cattle haven't grazed the pasture since before last year, refused to mow anything more than paths, so the lush grass, butterfly milkweed, scurf pea and blue wild indigo should be undisturbed. ''That's what I want, is grass and sky and symphony," she said. "If we're going to be in the Flint Hills, then I want people to enjoy it the way I enjoy it." The audience will include farmer and rancher Tom Burton. Burton, who is against the establishment of a national park at the Z-Bar Ranch north of Strong City, thinks Chase Countians may need to start hosting more events for outsiders. That way, he said, "we're sort of sharing our land, but you're still in charge of it in a way." Koger, who estimates 800 people visited her ranch last year, agrees the park debate is about people's desire for access to the Flint Hills. She's cautious about talk of turning the concert into an annual event, although she suggests her ranch would be a lovely site for a staging of "Quilters," the musical chronicling the lives of pioneer women. In the dim Hitch'N Post in town, a question about Koger's concert roused a round of smiles. ''I think we're all interested," said Geraldine Wagoner, who tends the counter a couple of days a week and plans to attend. ''Curiosity's got me. It's not my kind of music," said Ron Armstrong, a country-and-Western lover and retired immigrant from the Colorado ski country who had stopped in for a Coke and smoke. "As long as I know the way home, I'm OK." And as for the crowd, "it'sa temporary thing," Wagoner said. But "the coyotes will never be the same," quipped Richard Johnson, a retired military man and Chase County native (who plans to stay away).
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Click here
to read another Wichita Eagle article about Symphony on the Prairie
Click here to read a Kansas City Star article
about Symphony on the Prairie