The dazzle of live music performance makes an impact, but behind the scenes, creative notes still need to be hit and bills, like in any other business, must be paid.
Thanks to a recent grant from the Elissa Hepner Donor Advised Fund through Inland Empire Community Foundation, Palm Springs Friends of Philharmonic has been able to offset expenses that go into producing exceptional productions.
“We specialize in presenting the very best orchestras from around the world here,” said Lee Mills, executive director of Palm Springs Friends of Philharmonic. “And that’s quite an expensive endeavor that our ticket sales don’t cover. I would say they cover about 60 percent of the direct expenses related to concerts. And once you add the administrative and the education work we do, our ticket sales only cover about half of what we need to get through the year.”
The other half of that funding comes from donations from the Philharmonic’s patrons, and from foundations like IECF, Mills added. To that end, grants and donations are very critical to the organization being able to fill its mission here in Coachella Valley.
The Philharmonic has a long history of memorable concerts and performances, in fact. Renowned guest artists through the years include: pianists Piotr Anderszewski of the Swedish Chamber Orchestra (in 2008) and Alain Lefèvre of Pacific Symphony (2020); narrator Cate Blanchett of the Los Angeles Philharmonic (in 2026); and violinist Joshua Bell of the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields (in 2026).
Acclaimed conductors—from Petr Altrichter of Prague Symphony Orchestra (2005) to Boguslaw Dawidow of the Polish Baltic Frédéric Chopin Philharmonic (2016) have graced the stage at the McCallum Theatre.
Since its inception in 1974, Palm Springs Friends of Philharmonic has been committed to enhancing the cultural life of the Coachella Valley with world-class presentations of orchestras and exceptional classical music performances. The nonprofit also supports initiatives that educate the future generations of musicians and audiences.
“Thanks to the generosity of our patrons, we have been moving more into the second part of our mission,” Mills said. “The first part is that we present excellent classical music in the Valley. The next part of our mission is supporting music education to help bring music into the lives of different people.
“I’m very happy to say that last September, we hired, for the first time, an education coordinator,” he added. “That means we have a staff position responsible for education programs. In the past, we’ve only ever given scholarships, essentially, to students to go to summer camps or to go to music school, for university. But we’ve now started drastically expanding.”
During the past year, the organization has reached more than 500 students in the Coachella Valley by bringing these musicians from standout orchestras into the schools. Offering master classes and performances for the students has been a big hit.
Other noteworthy milestones include the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
“We had a quartet that went out to Indio High School and played at the performing arts there for more than 200 students,” Mills said. “There was also the Academy of St. Martin, which comes from the UK—they sent a string quartet out to two different schools here in the Palm Springs Unified School District. It was highly impactful to have students experience the performance, hearing classical music at this level for the first time.”
Mills says next year, the organization will further expand these programs. The London Symphony Orchestra will be performing a field trip concert at the McCallum Theater in February 2027.
“We’re hoping to accommodate more than 2,000 students, from third to fifth grades, introducing them to the orchestra,” he added. “And the London Symphony Orchestra will be sending some of their staff out here in October to do professional development sessions with local area schoolteachers, giving them tools and resources and practices to help bring music education into their classroom, which we think is so important, especially because a lot of these elementary schools don’t have dedicated music teachers.
“Being able to give general education teachers tools and resources to be able to bring music into their classroom is very important to us,” he added.
Learn more at psphil.org.
This story originally appeared in the Desert Sun, July 2026.
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