The Coulee Region Music Festival was founded in 1960 by a board that included Francesco “Frank” Italiano, the conductor of the Coulee Region Symphony Orchestra. It was his dream to establish both a summer symphony program and a youth symphony. He saw it eventually connecting to the “Wisconsin Idea” of extending quality music experiences to areas that otherwise would not have such music available to them.
Apparently there was an immediate interest to broaden the effort to include other arts, so the following year, 1961, the festival was renamed as the Coulee Region Arts Festival. There was an art exhibition, a film program, a youth symphony, a youth symphony school (the Symphony School of America) and a music clinic. The Coulee Region Symphony was the centerpiece and offered a week of concerts in late July.
Italiano began the Symphony School of America in 1961 at first by providing symphony workshops for students. It expanded annually, so that by 1964 it included approximately 58 students, a private concert, a master piano class and professional voice coaching. High school and college students and adult musicians learned together. The group was housed in the dormitories at UW-La Crosse and gave six concerts and up to five recitals. The participants were also able to earn up to three college credits in orchestra performance, applied instrumental performance and ensemble performance.
In 1966 an expansion of the Symphony School led to a residency for two weeks at Dodgeville for the students and their faculty of professional musicians. During this time they became The Symphony of the Hills and performed at Governor Dodge State Park. They then moved for a second residency of three weeks in La Crosse, where the musicians performed as the Coulee Region Symphony. In both settings, the students and their instructors performed side-by-side. Each year there was a residency of a musician from a major orchestra to enrich students and faculty alike.
Small subgroups of the SSA were formed: a German band, a jazz combo and a chamber music group of faculty. In 1979, for instance, the chamber music group performed in Ashland & Superior, Wisconsin, and Winona, Minnesota.
In 1972, there were three locations for residencies and concerts: Two weeks at Dodgeville as The Symphony of the Hills, one week at Shell Lake as the Indianhead Symphony and then two weeks at La Crosse at which time this symphony was renamed “The Great River Symphony.” By 1975 there was sufficient support to establish a youth symphony just in La Crosse.
Parallel to the growth of the musical efforts was a renaming of the entire festival to become the Coulee Region Arts Festival and then the Coulee Region Festival of Arts, the last name becoming the one that was used until 1976 when it became the Great River Festival of Arts.
In 1984, after a disagreement between the symphony board and the festival board, the Symphony School was moved and thus headquartered for the summer program at Superior and Dodgeville. Nevertheless, the concerts continued in La Crosse, and this same year the community celebrated the 24th year of the summer festival.
