Gratitude Tuesday
Friends Like These
This Giving Tuesday, we're grateful for our Friends of the DSO, like Dean and Giles Simmer.
Dean and Giles are Governing Members of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, and Dean recently became a Trustee. Dean remembers his first DSO performance in 2012, a program which included his absolute favorite piece, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition, conducted by Music Director Laureate Leonard Slatkin: “Suffice to say, it was a really positive first concert experience!”
Dean and Giles became involved with the DSO following the pandemic. Prior to 2020, Dean really enjoyed attending live performances of diverse styles. “When the pandemic hit and we lost all live music, and professional musicians like my wife couldn’t sing except on Zoom calls, I really felt the absence,” Dean said. They agreed to become more engaged in “the other side” of performing arts. “Considering the number of absolutely powerful, moving, life-changing performances we have seen the past few years, it has only served to underscore the importance of live music.”
Dean, Giles and their son Alexander are mega orchestra fans, attending over 26 performances a season. They’ve come to treasure “the sense of familiar” coming to performances. And that familiar feeling extends to when the DSO is on the road too. Dean and Alexander traveled to Florida to watch the DSO perform on tour in February 2024.
“ The people that make up the DSO, from musicians to ushers, really make the experience of coming to Orchestra Hall a meaningful one. ”
Dean Simmer, DSO Governing Member
Music was always a feature of Dean’s life growing up, but his first significant musical memory came at his sister’s symphonic band concert. “We were seated dead center of the auditorium with my grandparents,” Dean explained. “The band started to play a Sousa march, and my grandparents looked around at the seated audience, then stood up and started to clap and stomp their feet... as if it were truly a march.” By the last few measures, Dean said, many more others were “standing and clapping along.”
The arts aren’t Dean’s only focus. In 2017, he co-founded Prideraiser with a friend, an organization which unites soccer fans with local LGBTQIA2S+ organizations during Pride Month, pledging money each time their home soccer team scores goals. In Detroit alone, their local campaign has raised over $250,000 for the Ruth Ellis Center, an organization dedicated to eliminating barriers for young people in Detroit, Hamtramck, and Highland Park.
Freedom of expression is an important value for the Simmers, by championing the DSO, they aim to “make sure everyone who calls this incredible city home feels, deeply, that the DSO is their orchestra.” With Friends of the DSO like Dean, Giles, Alexander—and you—we can make that happen!
Thank you for your support of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra. With you, the music plays on.
