Yuku free message boards

Benjamin J. Wade, Artistic Director, Conductor and co-founder of the Susanville Symphony, began his musical career as a child in Knoxville, Tennessee. A child prodigy on Trumpet, Maestro Wade had made appearances with the Knoxville Symphony, the Indianapolis Symphony and the New York Metropolitan Opera, and was hailed as one of the best young trumpet players in the world after winning the prestigious International Trumpet Guild Competition CG Conn Award in 1988 - at age sixteen. He later received his Masters of Music in Conducting from the University of Nevada under the tutelage of Dr. Mack MacGrannahan.

Maestro Wade's musical insight, passion for beauty in music, demanding expectations for the orchestra, and charisma, have captivated audiences and inspired our community to not only support the Susanville Symphony, but raise it to new heights. "I have always asked the musicians to think not just of the notes, but the music as well. We want to do so much more than just play the notes, we want to make people weep, smile, laugh, and ponder what we play. We seek that beauty not just in an entire composition, but in the individual bars and notes themselves."

Wade's interests beyond music have given him the sobriquet "Renaissance Man".

In 2009 he starred in the CBS TV Primetime Series Survivor: Tocantins, becoming known to millions as "coach". The nickname tagged from his other passion in life, coaching college soccer, is well earned as he holds one of the highest win percentages of collegiate coaches today, a record of 148-47-13 in twelve years.

Beyond music and sports, Wade is an accomplished adventurer. One of his proudest feats came in 1996, when he set the world's record for the longest solo sea-kayak expedition as he paddled six-thousand-one-hundred-thirty-two miles from San Felipe, Baja California to Punta Charambira, Colombia, the feat recorded in the historical novel A Voyage Beyond Reason.