Photo provided David Bowden, artistic director of the Columbus Indiana Philharmonic, speaks at The Notables’ fundraiser Wednesday at Helen Haddad Hall in Columbus.
On David Bowden’s early musical journey, the then-brand new Columbus Pro Musica Orchestra originally was supposed to be only a kind of layover.
Besides, the 33-year-old Bloomington-based new conductor had a young family to feed, and the post for the fledgling organization paid only $16,500 annually in 1987.
“I was going to be here (in Columbus) until I found a better job,” Bowden, now 68, said.
He recounted his thoughts Wednesday before about 60 people at an intimate fundraiser held by the orchestra’s volunteer arm known as The Notables at Helen Haddad Hall in downtown Columbus. He drew laughter as he reminisced.
The nonprofit musical ensemble’s leaders have had the last laugh. Bowden, retiring from the Philharmonic after 35 years after the free May 27 SALUTE! military concert, “fell in love with the people of Columbus,” as he put it — especially true shortly after the late Cummins Engine Co. and community stalwart J. Irwin Miller urged him to make a decade-long commitment to build relationships here and to make the orchestra great.
Bowden bonded immediately with the late Haddad because they discovered they both loved helping young people learn to make music.
“At heart, I’m an educator, and I knew then that I did not want to necessarily do that role in the conventional way,” Bowden said.
The Philharmonic’s youth music education program, now led by Vanessa Edwards, has blossomed into what those beyond Columbus — performers and arts administrators alike — see as one of more unique such outreaches in the country, operating in every Bartholomew Consolidated School Corporation school.
Bowden also recalled, as he has in the past, Miller being a part of a standing ovation at the first Pro Musica concert he attended at First Christian Church at the end of that first season. That was especially significant since Miller originally had asked Bowden about a concert visit, “Will it hurt my ears?”
Bowden, who has conducted internationally, led workshops for the American Symphony Orchestras League, and earned national programming awards, has become one of the reasons that the professional ensemble is music to the ears of many of its supporters and followers.
Donnie Robinette, the Philharmonic executive director, called Bowden “a mentor, a teacher, a musician and a friend to all of us here.”
Bowden’s educator role was in the spotlight Wednesday morning as the Philharmonic presented its annual youth-oriented Adventure Concerts at the local Judson Erne Auditorium before an estimated 2,500 students from Bartholomew and many surrounding counties. Bowden teaches youngsters about various instruments, his role as a conductor, and allows the students to provide the cannon shot sounds in the appropriate parts of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s classic “1812 Overture.”
Ruth Agbolosoo, acting president of The Notables, thought about Bowden’s way with kids.
“In the future,” she said, “I don’t know who’s going to do Adventure Concerts quite like that.”
