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History of the Florida International Festival

"It is so mad, so utterly wild a scheme that we can't resist!" So saying the management of the London Symphony canceled 20 recording sessions, five concerts, refused an invitation to the Athen Festival and, with the abandon of undergrads leaving for spring vacation, bundled the orchestra off to that big sandbox in the sun, Daytona Beach, Fla. They are the attraction at the first Florida International Music Festival, by far the most culturally ambitious festival in the Southeast. (TIME Magazine, August 1966)

Daytona Beach may be the World's Most Famous Beach - but it is also the Official Summer Home of the London Symphony Orchestra and home to the Florida International Festival.

Since 1966, when Tippen Davidson, publisher of The News-Journal, music scholar and one of the founders of the Florida International Festival, decided Daytona Beach needed something besides spring break and bikers to represent its "Most Famous Beach," the London Symphony Orchestra and the Daytona Beach community have forged a lasting and open friendship - culminating in the biennial Florida International Festival. "There were a lot of serious, cultured people in Daytona, but who'd know?" Davidson said. "So, I wrote to 30 of the world's greatest orchestras, only the LSO came back with a program - down to the last grace note. In eight days we raised the money and told 'em, 'come'."

The Florida International Festival is a project of Central Florida Cultural Endeavors Inc., a non-profit organization incorporated in 1974 to present a wide variety of cultural events to the citizens of Volusia County, Florida. During the Winter Season, CFCE brings a program of small group and chamber music, often coupled with free in-school residencies at area campuses of all levels. Each spring, CFCE brings a choral-music festival, now in its seventh season, to thousands of residents and tourists alike.

It is for the Festival, however, that CFCE is now best known. Organized originally in 1966 and run under other sponsorship through 1969, the Festival has found a home with CFCE since its revival in 1982.

The Festival features the London Symphony Orchestra, or LSO, with great conductors and soloists at Peabody Auditorium and the Ocean Center in Daytona Beach. The Festival celebrated its 25th anniversary in 1991 - with the LSO naming Daytona Beach and Volusia County its "Official American Summer Home". With the exception of London, England, the LSO has played more concerts in the city of Daytona Beach than any place else in the world.

In 1987 a community-based Florida International Festival Board of Directors was organized within CFCE to seek wider support for the increasingly expensive undertaking and to more fully represent the public. This board, together with a large and dedicated Guild, has greatly increased the Festival's outreach and financial stability.

Since the 1991 Festival, a broad range of other kinds of musical and cultural performances has been added to the concerts by the LSO. Chamber music, dance, jazz and the unusual were but the first.

In 1993 the 10-day Festival was extended to 17 days, covering three weekends, in order to better accommodate the numbers of performances and allow the LSO concerts, the cornerstone of each Festival, not to have to compete with other concerts.

By 1995 the Festival had established itself as an event with something for everyone. Not only did the LSO return with its outstanding classical performances, but other tastes such as the comedy of Victor Borge, the country/bluegrass sounds of Mark O'Connor and Leo Kottke, the jazz of Marcus Toberts, Pilobolus Dance Company and the swing of the Manhattan Rhythm Kings offered a mosaic of entertainment few could refuse. Trisha Yearwood, then an up and coming Country Music star, taped her performance at the LSO Pops Concert, which later aired on cable channel TNT. The New Horizons Series welcomed back Barry Tuckwell, Osian Ellis and The Light Brigade. The comedy of Fred Garbo & Co., and the Irish band Four to the Bar added new dimension to the New Horizons Series and Southbeat showed throngs of Volusia, Flagler and Seminole Counties' residents how to use everything from power drills to cups full of beans to make music in the INformance series.

The Festival family reunited in 1997 with friends from all over the world. A special reunion of three of the former Soviet Union's greatest stars was one of the high points of the 1997 Festival. Mstislav Rostropovich and his boyhood friend and cultural peer Rodion Shchedrin and his wife, Prima Ballerina, Maya Pliseteskaya thrilled Festival audiences not only with their wonderful talents but also with their humanity. The State of Florida added to the excitement by naming Rostropovich an Official Florida Ambassador to the Arts. The legends of New Orleans jazz, Al Hurt, Pete Fountain and The Preservation Hall Jazz band brought down the house Festival First Night and the "Prince of Pops," Erich Kunzel conducted an explosive LSO Pops Concert.

As the Florida International Festival, feature the London Symphony Orchestra looks to the new millennium, the quest to provide the finest classical, jazz, dance and the unusual entertainment the world has to offer will continue.

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