Symphony’s show to go on
Players to use loaner instruments as police look for thieves
The Little Rock Wind Symphony show will go on despite the Monday morning theft of the symphony’s trailer, which contained about $45,000 worth of musical instruments and equipment.
Playing with borrowed instruments, the all-volunteer symphony will take to the stage tonight at Second Presbyterian Church in Little Rock for A Festival of Carols holiday concert.
Meanwhile, Little Rock police will continue to investigate the theft.
Police responded to a theft call around noon Monday at Second Presbyterian Church at 600 Pleasant Valley Drive, after the symphony’s executive director Brenda Barber reported that the church’s facilities manager had said the symphony’s trailer was missing from the church parking lot. The facilities manager told police that he had reviewed church surveillance video and saw a white, 2000 Chevrolet pickup pull the trailer from the parking lot shortly before 2 a.m. Monday.
The trailer had been parked in the lot over the weekend as the symphony, which first performed in 1994, prepared for a Tuesday night rehearsal and tonight’s performance. The trailer door was locked, and its hitch was locked and chained.
Barber said the trailer — a white, 12-by-7-foot, 1997 Featherlite with license plate number AA206536 — contained several musical instruments, including timpanis, a xylophone, a vibraphone, all of the symphony’s cymbals and stands, most of the symphony’s Latin percussion instruments and a Roland digital keyboard.
“We lucked out a little bit in that one of the members had checked out some of the smaller instruments for a gig that he was playing somewhere else,” Barber said. “Those were saved.”
All of the items are insured, and no wind instruments were inside the trailer, Barber said, but some of the instruments are more than 20 years old.
The symphony, financially supported by donations and sponsorships, will file an insurance claim, but Barber said replacing the instruments will be a “long and tedious process.” She said the symphony will consider fundraisers in the coming months to raise money for new instruments.
“It takes a long time sometimes to get some of those instruments. They are made to order,” she said. “We’re getting through this concert, but I don’t know how we’ll manage in January when we resume rehearsing for the rest of the season.”
Timpanist Christopher Dunn is one symphony member who will use a borrowed instrument for tonight’s performance. After Tuesday evening’s rehearsal, he said he’s comfortable with the loaner. He wondered who would steal property from a church parking lot.
“I would think that no one would try to steal something that was in the possession of a church,” he said. “It was quite devastating because we had a lot of instruments in that trailer, as well as stands for every member of the wind symphony. Those don’t come cheap, so recovering those would be nice.”
The theft is the second musical-instrument heist in Little Rock in less than a month. Cincinnati doom metal band Beneath Oblivion had its trailer stolen from a hotel in southwest Little Rock on Nov. 16. Police arrested one man that day for attempting to sell a band member’s bass guitar at a west Little Rock music store, and the band reclaimed its trailer and most of its gear.
Little Rock police do not believe the wind symphony theft and the November theft are related.
“The thing is, these instruments are orchestra instruments,” Barber said. “There’s not a market for these instruments. Anyone [who the perpetrators] could sell them to or could use them is going to know they are stolen. They’re not going to touch them. Any pawnshop or music store will know better.
“I don’t know what will happen to all the instruments. They might be dumped in a ditch somewhere. I have no idea what the thieves could do with the equipment. Maybe use them for their own amusement.”