Peter Perret prepares to step down from Philharmonia of Greensboro after 13 years

Peter Perret’s last concert with the Philharmonia of Greensboro turned Dana Auditorium into more than a stage for a farewell. It marked the close of a 13-year run that began in December 2012, and it placed one of Greensboro’s longtime community music institutions before the public as both an arts organization and a civic asset.

The program mixed portions of Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony with Peter and the Wolf, performed with dancers from Greensboro Ballet, and The Way West by Greensboro composer Sumner Spradling. Admission was free, donations were encouraged to support the orchestra and the City Ensemble Concert series, and a reception followed the performance so audience members could thank and honor Perret.

That structure matters in Greensboro, where Creative Greensboro says the city’s community music ensembles have presented free concerts to residents for almost 50 years. The Philharmonia is one of four city ensembles it supports, alongside the Greensboro Concert Band, the Choral Society of Greensboro and the Greensboro Big Band. In a city that leans on volunteer musicians for public-facing cultural programming, Perret’s departure is not simply a personnel change. It is a transition in a system that depends on continuity, access and steady public buy-in.

Perret has led a semi-professional orchestra whose players range from conservatory students to experienced retirees, a lineup that reflects the local pipeline Creative Greensboro says it exists to support. His tenure also carried the practical and symbolic work of passing on traditions learned from some of the world’s leading conducting masters. During the pandemic, he recalled a performance of Schubert’s Octet with only eight players, when extra rehearsal time gave the music an unusually intimate, chamber-like character.

What Perret said he will miss most is the camaraderie of making music in a setting that is not competitive or combative, but unifying. That idea sits at the center of the Philharmonia’s role in Guilford County: a free public concert, a local composer on the bill, Greensboro Ballet on stage, and a reception afterward that turned a final performance into a community event.

For Greensboro, the handoff leaves the next chapter of the Philharmonia tied to a larger civic question: whether the audience, support and trust built over years of free concerts can carry the ensemble forward as strongly as Perret carried it to the end of his tenure.