While Chucktown’s journalists and bloggers agonize publicly over the Charleston Symphony’s opaque future, the orchestra’s terrific musicians aren’t just sitting idly on their hands, waiting for fickle fate to overtake them. Many have stepped up to the plate, helping out in fundraising phone-a-thons, canvassing their personal networks and assisting in union negotiations. You can yak on all you want about how much the community stands to lose as our precious symphony teeters on the brink of fiscal collapse – but these are the folks whose livelihoods are on the line in these trying times.

And now they’ve taken the fresh step of teaming up to bring us a special holiday benefit concert, to take place at First (Scots) Presbyterian Church (53 Meeting St.) – on Tuesday, December 16th at 8:00 p.m.

You’ll hear Corelli’s famous Christmas Concerto, plus other concertos by Bach and Mozart – featuring the CSO’s fabulous principal players as soloists: folks like Concertmaster Yuriy Bekker, violinists Alan Molina & Megan Allison, Jessica Hull-Dambaugh (flute), Mark Gainer (oboe), Charlie Messersmith (clarinet) and Chris Sales (bassoon) – among others. We’ll also hear from the CSO Brass Quintet.

So, if you care about your orchestra’s future, BE THERE – and be prepared to $upport them as best you can. Sure, everybody’s holiday budgets are tighter this year, and gift lists are shorter. But stop, think, and examine your lifestyles. Why not give up a couple of weeks’ worth of your customary morning lattés … or bring bag lunches to work for the rest of the year … and donate the cash you’ll save to keep the music sounding? Negotiate with your pampered kids about sacrificing one of their planned gifts to the cause. (…OR, put a bundle of CSO tickets in their stockings!) Talk to your friends, neighbors and colleagues about chipping in – even if they can’t make it to the concert.

I’ll see you there. And I ask you – as the beautiful music washes over your ears and through your souls – to reflect upon what these wonderful musicians mean to you, and the many other ways they enrich us all. Leave a generous gift – or whatever you can afford. Then go home and think about ways you can keep helping. Scroll down to my “S. O. S.” post below for some ideas – like passing on a link to Eargasms to everybody you know.

Let’s make this the year we give OURSELVES and our community the best gift we possibly can: the certain prospect of keeping immortal music – as played by a world-class ensemble – alive in our fair city.