Segal & Davis Family Foundation Education Initiative

The Segal & Davis Family Foundation has served a continuing role as a driving catalyst for the WVSO's ever-expanding music education programming. The foundation made a nationally significant, four-year, $200,000 commitment to the WVSO that targets 27 of West Virginia 's most economically distressed counties.

The Segal & Davis Family Foundation recently agreed to extend this partnership past the four-year period enabling the WVSO to continue this nationally significant program.

Katharine B. Tierney Music Education Fund

The Tierney Music Education Fund is a multi-purpose program that provides Young People's Concert Scholarships to economically distressed portions of West Virginia 's remaining 28 counties not covered by the Segal & Davis Initiative. This critical fund creates an opportunity for schools located in distressed pockets of these counties to qualify for transportation and admission fee scholarships when attending a Young People's Concert Series. The fund is also an important underwriter of each of the actual Young People's Concert Series.

ECA Foundation Central Appalachia Scholarship Program

This ECA Foundation grant will allow the Orchestra to provide student passes for members of the New River Youth Symphony and Chorus (NRYSC) to attend all WVSO symphonic, Family Discovery, and Montclaire String Quartet subscription performances for free during the remainder of the 2007-2008 season.

ECA funding also provided New River Youth to co-host a master class opportunity at Tamarack by Doug Cameron.  A renowned fiddler and innovator of contemporary and electric violin, Mr. Cameron performed with the WVSO as the featured guest artist during the March 14-15, 2008 Pops Series concert program in the Clay Center's Maier Foundation Performance Hall.

Incorporated since 2006, the New River Youth Symphony and Chorus is non-profit organization that serves approximately sixty (60) students from Fayette, Raleigh, Nicholas, and Greenbrier Counties in West Virginia.