Last Friday, a long-awaited and highly anticipated debut happened as the new Salt City Orchestra performed its first concert at Dillon Nature Center.
It was an auspicious start, with an enjoyable program of music in front of a large audience, especially considering how threatening the sky looked mere minutes before the start time. It was clear that people were looking forward to the concert.
Hutchinson has a problem with negative self-talk—a lot of people are too quick to say negative things about Hutchinson that aren’t backed up by the facts. “There’s nothing to do,” is one of the most common examples, and it is plainly untrue.
Even if we limit ourselves to a narrow reading of “things to do”—shows where people are performing live and in-person—Hutchinson is blessed with an abundance of opportunities to enjoy the performing arts.
Salt City Orchestra is joined in the category of local live music by the Hutchinson Municipal Band, Classical Revolution ICT’s Beethoven & Beer series at Sandhills Brewing, and school and college concerts.
If you are more interested in touring musicians, the Hutchinson Community Concert series, Historic Fox Theatre, the Red Shed, and Strokeys fit the bill, covering a variety of musical tastes. And every September, the Kansas State Fair brings in some really big names.
It is astonishing in the best way possible that Hutchinson has multiple community theater groups—Family Community Theatre and Stage 9—with their own styles and approaches to theater. And like with music, the college and schools add to that strength with their own stage productions.
Add to that Third Thursday, parades, and various annual events, and far from having “nothing to do,” it actually becomes challenging to keep up with all that there is to do. Friday night’s orchestra concert shared the evening with a Family Community Theatre performance of “The Hiding Place,” the NAACP Youth’s Juneteenth barbecue, and live music at Strokeys, for example.
This has just been looking at performing arts. There are also festivals, clubs, sports, civic organizations and volunteer opportunities, and there are plenty of good reasons to get out of your house or apartment in Hutchinson.
But if you look at all the myriad possibilities that already exist and still can’t find the thing you really want to do, there is still another, secret option. You didn’t hear it from us, but if you want Hutchinson to have a kind of entertainment or activity that it is missing, you can start it.
That’s how all these other things came to be. They didn’t spring up spontaneously from the ground. Someone, or a group of someones, decided they wanted those things—an orchestra, a community theater group, a live music venue, etc.—and they wanted them enough that they did something about it.
Yes, you can make your own fun. And very often, as you make your own fun, you’ll end up making something that is fun for other people, too.
And if you didn’t catch the Salt City Orchestra’s first concert, another opportunity is coming at 7 p.m. this Friday at DCI Park, 201 N. Main St., part of the Final Friday concert series.
– The Hutchinson Tribune Editorial Board