Last week, the Ontario Arts Council presented the Vida Peene Award for 2009 to the Sudbury Symphony Orchestra. The $5000 award was presented by OAC board member Adrien Lamoureux at the orchestra’s second of six concerts this season.

The SSO was identified by the peer jury as a “vital organization in this northern city, embraced by its community with a remarkable audience base, regularly playing to capacity houses.” Jurors further commended the orchestra for its “excellent education programs that build awareness and appreciation of music in children and youth.” Jury members included Dr. John Burge, Associate Director at Queen’s University School of Music; Vicky Dvorak, a violinist with the Kitchener-Waterloo Symphony; Michael Grit, Theatre Manager of the Richmond Hill Centre for the Performing Arts; Glenn Klassen, Music Director of the Lethbridge Symphony Orchestra in Alberta and Mary-Liz Warwick, local business woman and active volunteer member of the Sudbury community.

The late Vida Peene was a Hamilton-based arts patron whose remarkable legacy continues to nurture the arts in Ontario and Canada. The Ontario Arts Council is one of eight specified organizations that receive income through investment earnings from Peene’s original bequest to the Canada Council for the Arts. Income from The Vida Peene Fund is given every two years to an Ontario orchestra other than the Toronto Symphony Orchestra (the TSO having been provided for separately through Vida Peene’s estate). Past recipients include the Windsor Symphony Orchestra (2007) and the Esprit Orchestra (2005). For many years prior to 2005, income from the fund helped to support the costs of the Ontario Festival of Youth Orchestras, a project then administered by Orchestras Canada.