If you didn’t make it to the Shoreline Youth Symphony Orchestra’s (SYSO) final school-year concert run by Ann Clemmons and her husband, Bill, last Sunday, May 18, you still have one more chance to catch this musical Madison couple in their element. Ann and Bill will conduct their last concert on the Madison Town Green on Saturday, July 4.

Ann and Bill are retiring this year from their posts as directors of the Shoreline Youth Symphony Orchestra, which they started in 1985 after taking over the youth orchestra started by the late Madison band director Reid Gerritt. Ann conducts the string instrument players, while Bill conducts the brass players and jazz band. There are two orchestras—SYSO is all high-schoolers from across the shoreline, and the Whiz Kids Orchestra is mostly 5th- to 8th- grade players, with a couple of younger kids.

“Sometimes people start violin really small,” Ann comments.

They’re retiring from directing SYSO after 30 years because “it’s just time,” Ann says. “We follow the school calendar and sometimes we want to go away at a different time. It’s been great, but we feel like [SYSO] really needs young leadership. We really need someone to come in with a fresh outlook. The young girl who’s taking over has three kids, one in high school and two in middle school. They all play instruments. She conducts the freshman orchestra at Guilford High School, so she’s looking for a little bit more work.

“I think it will really be nice, because she’ll probably have her kids involved; they’ll probably get their friends involved. It’s become more and more Madison-oriented because we always rehearse here. We want to spread it out a little. We’ve tried to get more Guilford kids; they have a nice orchestra at their high school—all instruments, a real symphonic orchestra—which Madison doesn’t have; it just has a string orchestra.”

Ann herself plays the violin, and Bill is a brass and woodwind player. When asked if they had a room in their house just dedicated to instruments, they both laugh.

“A couple actually!” Ann says. “I moved a cello out of the corner of the living room for this interview.”

With ample free time and their tether to area school calendars broken, Ann says, “We’ll probably travel more. I want to do a river cruise between Paris and the Mediterranean. We’ll still give private lessons, stay involved in the church choir, and play in small groups.”

Ann grew up in Oregon. After graduating from Yale School of Music, Ann’s first job was with New Haven public schools, where she met North Carolina native Bill at Lincoln-Basset School while they were both doing what they do now—Ann teaching strings and Bill teaching band. They now have two daughters, Melinda, 40, who lives in Guilford, and Elizabeth, 38, who lives in Middletown. Both women are also teachers and musicians.

Ann found her calling in 2nd grade, when a violin player picked her up, sat her on his lap, put the violin in front of them, and played the “William Tell Overture.”

“I thought it was me playing!” Ann exclaims. “That was it; I was totally hooked. He was very nice, gave me some lessons, started me on violin.”

She soon joined her town’s junior symphony.

“I loved it. I so looked forward to those rehearsals.”

Bill met his first trumpet when his older sister’s boyfriend was looking for a way to get her pesky kid brother out of the way.

“My sister had a friend, and he played trumpet. He came over to see her, and I was a little kid always hanging around my older sister,” Bill recalls. “He wanted to get rid of me, so he said, ‘Why don’t you take this and go play it.’ He gave me the trumpet, and I started taking lessons in school.

“By high school, I really played music for fun. In my hometown there was a local TV and radio station where the kids could play. They had contests and stuff like that, like an open mic, so I played ‘Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White’ because I was trying to impress this girl. This guy heard me play as he was driving through town and called the school the next week to find out who I was.”

That resulted in a scholarship to college, Ann says, at which Bill earned a teaching degree.

Bill finds particular joy in playing and teaching jazz.

“It’s an awesome feeling when you finally get kids to understand what jazz is, getting them to understand that you are the creator, you’re the one who produces it,” he says. “Once they do it, they won’t go back.”

Ann wants nothing more than for others to fall under music’s spell.

“We’ve always thought that music brings the community together, brings people together, people of all ages,” she says. “People of all ages should enjoy playing music, just because music is beautiful, and playing with other people is what it’s all about.”

Bill adds, “Jazz is American music; it’s the only American music that we have. It brings about a different part of creating for kids. This country is built on creation, on being able to create something—something new, something different. Jazz brings a whole sense of creating something. Music is really a way that kids and adults can learn to understand each other and enjoy being around each other and have fun.”

To nominate someone for Person of the Week, email Melissa at m.babcock@shorepublishing.com.

The Shoreline Youth Symphony Orchestra will play the annual 4th of July concert on the Town Green in Madison on Saturday, July 4 at 5 p.m. For more info, visit www.sysoct.org.