Yo-Yo Ma will return to Des Moines on Nov. 1. Photo: Jason Bell
Writer: Kyle Munson
Before television (1927). Before the Great Depression (1929). Before World War II (1939).
Before the Des Moines Symphony (1937). Before the Des Moines Metro Opera (1973). Before Slipknot (1995).
In 1925, when half of American households still didn’t have electricity, let alone broadband internet and smartphones, the Civic Music Association was established in Des Moines to import a steady stream of elite classical soloists and ensembles. Five or six acts performed each year.
A short article published April 9, 1925, in the Des Moines Register heralded the imminent arrival of the concert series as “a single community course of high-class musical attractions.” It appeared on the same page as an ad for Magnavox tube radio sets, a mass communication technology touted as “the miracle of the century.”
CMA was officially founded that June with 100 charter members. Its ranks quickly swelled to 1,413 by the first concert on Nov. 6, featuring the Kibalchich Russian Symphonic Choir at the Des Moines Coliseum. (The grand old theater at First and Locust streets burned down in 1949.)
Annual dues were $5, which included admission to all concerts.
From the start, public education was integral to the organization’s agenda, with special classes and performances for schoolkids. By the 1950s thousands of children routinely enjoyed their own daytime concerts with the classical artists featured each season.
CMA never restricted itself to a single music hall. Even today it still roams the city, with frequent visits to Hoyt Sherman Place, the Temple for Performing Arts and Drake University’s Sheslow Auditorium.
“We choose a venue based on the best way to showcase the artist we’re bringing in,” said Ashley Sidon, the association’s executive director.
To celebrate its centennial in the 2025-2026 season, CMA is welcoming a star-studded lineup that includes the likes of cellist Yo-Yo Ma and pianists Emanuel Ax and Fred Hersch.
This builds on a history that featured such icons as the pianists Sergei Rachmaninoff, Vladimir Horowitz and Van Cliburn; the violinists Isaac Stern and Itzhak Perlman; and singers from Marian Anderson to Simon Estes.
The fledgling CMA represented “the hope of Des Moines, musically,” and “a test of whether we can learn the lesson of civic cooperation,” according to a 1926 letter to the editor of the Des Moines Tribune from Raymond Carr, dean of the school of fine arts at Des Moines University. (The long-gone university, formerly Des Moines College, was unaffiliated with the current medical school with the same name.)
The front page of the Register on Nov. 25, 1930, featured validation from one of the CMA’s renowned performers. “The rise of a cultural civilization in Iowa and the middlewest through the efforts of civic music associations drew praise Monday night from Edward Johnson, tenor of the Metropolitan Opera Company of New York. Residents of the hinterlands ‘have awakened to the need of refined entertainment.’”
Perhaps those of us in the hinterlands will never escape the perception that we must be enlightened by our more refined coastal counterparts. But the sentiment was especially typical of its time: CMA emerged in an era when national tastemakers were particularly concerned about perpetuating Western classical culture and art throughout smaller cities. It joined a national association in 1930 to support and subsidize its programming. After World War II, there was a boom of such civic music networks, often supported by the recording industry, which was eager to sell vinyl LPs. Associations proliferated nationwide in cities as small as Ames and Mason City.
CMA’s 1938-39 season was so oversubscribed that many ticket holders had to be refunded or placed on a waiting list. Membership surpassed 4,000 by 1947, ranking Des Moines among the top three such associations in the nation alongside Eugene, Oregon, and Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Even so, the season ticket price didn’t increase for 28 years, when it rose to $6.
What’s remarkable is that CMA outlived the national trend, weathering the onset of the rock ‘n’ roll counterculture, navigating the disruptions of the internet and bouncing back after the COVID pandemic.
According to CMA’s own records, it was founded by three well-connected volunteers: Elizabeth Bates Cowles, Elsa Neumann and Gertrude Shloss.
A century later, it’s still led by three women: Sidon, Ajia Whipp (director of operations and experience) and Calla Whipp (director of marketing and communications).
Sidon, a cello professor at Drake, spent four years on the CMA board before she became executive director last year. Several years ago, she founded her own free summer chamber music series, the Zenith Chamber Music Festival, which made her realize how much she loved programming events.
CMA has intertwined the educational and programming threads of her career.
“I feel really lucky I get to help shape the cultural atmosphere of Des Moines,” Sidon said, “and even more importantly, help bring educational opportunities to students all throughout greater Des Moines.”
Along the way, CMA has supported some of its fellow civic institutions, including the newly formed Des Moines Symphony, when it still was known as the Drake-Des Moines Symphony, and the Music Under the Stars concert series by the Des Moines Municipal Band. CMA also donated the house organ for the newly opened Veterans Memorial Auditorium in 1955.
CMA also evolved, gradually expanding from classical music and European soloists to embrace homegrown jazz and the innovations of Black musicians from here in the United States. CMA was founded the same year Louis Armstrong began recording his seminal “Hot Five” and “Hot Seven” sessions in Chicago — which was still part of the hinterlands to some East Coasters — and it’s been around long enough to participate in the generational shift of what “belongs” in the classical musical canon.
“We can’t just get stuck in a rut of always presenting the same Mendelssohn and Beethoven,” Sidon said.
Pianists George Shearing and Marian McPartland led the jazz incursion in 1983. CMA hosted so many jazz concerts over the next two decades that by the time I was reviewing shows as the Register’s music critic in the early 2000s, I associated the series as much with jazz as classical.
I still remember being mesmerized by a 2002 CMA performance by vibraphone and marimba phenomenon named Stefon Harris. He and his jazz quartet frolicked, careened and swapped solos through a solid hour of music at Sheslow Auditorium before they took even a brief pause. Harris was such a deferential bandleader that he would kneel out of sight behind his instruments whenever one of his sidemen took a solo.
Some of the magic of CMA’s first century is rooted in what former executive director Debra Peckumn calls “that salon thing,” where you feel as if you’re sitting so close to the musicians that you notice every subtle timbre or raised eyebrow. After all, the charm of chamber music relies on none of the innovations, technological or otherwise, that have evolved since 1925.
“You can be 10 feet from whoever is on stage,” Peckumn said. “It goes beyond the music. You know if they’re wearing Old Spice or not. That’s sort of the signature piece of it.”
That said, CMA’s splashy centennial season may feature stars like Yo-Yo Ma in a larger space, such as the Des Moines Civic Center.
Wherever the concerts take place, Sidon will be lingering backstage. “I love to watch the performance but also the effect of the music on the crowd,” she said.
Whether gazing across the audience or back through the years, CMA’s effect on our community is a sight and sound to behold.
Highlights from CMA history
1925 Kibalchich Russian Symphonic Choir
1932 Sergei Rachmaninoff
1937 Marian Anderson
1939 Arthur Rubinstein
1943 Vladimir Horowitz
1947 Isaac Stern
1964 Van Cliburn
1967 Itzhak Perlman
1970 Leontyne Price
1973 Juilliard String Quartet
1975 Simon Estes
1977 Tokyo String Quartet
1981 Emanuel Ax
1987 Andre Watts
1989 Wynton Marsalis
1990 Modern Jazz Quartet
1994 Boys Choir of Harlem
1995 Joshua Bell
1997 Chick Corea and Gary Burton
2006 Kenny Barron
2014 Philip Glass
2017 David Sanborn
Civic Music Association’s Centennial Season
Check civicmusic.org for evolving details about showtimes, venues and tickets.
Nov. 1
Yo-Yo Ma
It’s not hyperbole to call Ma the world’s most famous cellist and, possibly, the most famous classical musician performing today. He was born in France to Chinese parents, grew up in the United States and can be heard in concert halls and film soundtracks worldwide. He’s even a United Nations Messenger of Peace.
Dec. 5
New York Voices
The jazz vocal group was founded in 1987 primarily by alumni of Ithaca College.
Emanuel Ax. Photo: Lisa Marie Mazzucco
Feb. 20, 2026
Emanuel Ax
One of the world’s best classical pianists, Ax was born in Ukraine to Polish-Jewish survivors of the Holocaust and has frequently collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma.
Bria Skonberg. Photo: Shervin Lainez
March 27, 2026
Bria Skonberg Quintet
The Canadian jazz trumpeter and singer, now based in New York, tours and teaches worldwide.
Fred Hersch. Photo: Roberto Cifarelli
April 17, 2026
Fred Hersch Trio
The pianist who studied at Grinnell College and the New England Conservatory is one of the most celebrated pianists of his generation and a stalwart supporter of AIDS services and education.
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