Windom Concert Series

Residents of Windom, a community in southwestern Minnesota with approximately 3,000 citizens, created a musical concert series in 1948. The series’ governing body, the Windom Concert Association, became one of the longest continually operating Minnesota organizations of its kind.

In June of 1948, Evelyn Malone and a group of other Windom residents set out to create an ongoing local concert series that would showcase musical talent within their town. To begin, she contacted the University of Minnesota Lecture and Concert Service (UMLCS) and asked for administrative guidance and help. On June 16, David Simmons of UMLCS met with interested Windom citizens to advise their organizing process. They chose Roland Muller as a temporary chairman and proceeded to elect seven officers, including a president (Morton Smith), a first vice president (Malone), and a second vice president (Russell Henry). All of the attendees (excluding Simmons) became the association’s board of directors.

In that same meeting, Simmons explained that other relatively small communities had established and conducted musical series by relying on something called an organized audience plan. The plan allowed people to attend performances only if they bought association memberships, which were sold during a one-week campaign held before the start of the season. This allowed the association to know how much it could spend on artists and musical groups without going into debt. At least three concerts were guaranteed per year, each of them to be performed in the 672-seat Windom High School Auditorium.

In the fall of 1948, the association held a membership drive. With promotional aid from people in the nearby towns of Mountain Lake, Jackson, Westbrook, Storden, Jeffers, and Heron Lake, it sold out the auditorium and established a successful beginning to the series
.
During the first year of the series, 118 volunteer workers organized a campaign dinner. They sold season tickets to 750 subscribers, guaranteeing a run of five performances with enough money left over to launch the next year’s season. Neighboring towns invited into the Windom project took part in the campaign and were represented on the association’s board of directors.

Windom gained statewide attention via Twin Cities newspapers for bringing talent to a town of its size. Participating artists began to spread the word about the ideal acoustics of Windom’s auditorium and the friendliness of its residents.

During the concert association’s early years, much of the success it achieved was attributed to out-of-town subscribers. Later, Windom and nearby towns such as St. James, Worthington, Redwood Falls, and Slayton established a reciprocity agreement so that members of a local association could attend performances in all of these communities at no extra charge.

Performances in the first decades of the series brought in famous entertainers, among them Fred Waring, Marian Anderson, Jerome Hines, Norman Luboff, and Mantovani. Dance troupes performed, as did theater companies and the Minneapolis Symphony. For many area residents, the series was their first experience of an opera, a symphony, or a ballet; some attended performances as school children. Visiting entertainers stayed in private homes and got to know local residents.

Two musicians raised in the Windom area returned to the city as adults to participate in the concert series. Neva Pilgrim, an internationally touring vocal artist, sang in Windom in 1979. Maria Schneider, and American composer and big-band leader who has won multiple Grammy Awards, performed there in 2015.