This month’s Milwaukee Magazine highlights the five winners of its 2025 Betty Awards. The awards honor extraordinary women doing remarkable work in Milwaukee.
One of the recipients is Linda Edelstein, CEO of the Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra (MYSO). She's played instruments since childhood, and has led an extensive career in music education and performance.
"That opportunity to be able to bring another musician [or] composer’s work to life is a really unique experience that one does in community," she says. "Whether it’s a solo work, with an orchestra or a small ensemble, it’s always an opportunity to create something new together."
Edelstein has led MYSO since 2012, and up to a thousand students across the region participate in a wide range of programming each year. For Edelstein, the arts are not merely a luxury but an essential — and severely underfunded — component of education.
"When we removed classical music from the radio, when we removed opportunities for access to the arts, it became something that people didn’t necessarily know how to connect with," she says.
Edelstein joins Lake Effect's Audrey Nowakoski to share more about MYSO, the benefits of music education and the importance of arts access.
"Music connects us and unites in a way that really nothing else can," she says. "[It offers] a unique opportunity because of a common language that we speak."
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