STORY AND PHOTO BY KAREN BOSSICK

The Wood River Orchestra is returning to where it all started when it performs its Winter Concert on Sunday, March 16.

The group will stage a free concert featuring Tchaikovsky and other works at 4 p.m. Sunday, March 16, at The Liberty Theatre in Hailey.

That’s where a fledgling orchestra created by the late Sue Mendelsohn performed its first public concert, following a sneak preview of Beatles tunes at a Souper Supper in the parish hall of St. Charles Catholic Church.

Six members of the orchestra were present for that first concert and will take up their instruments and baton for this concert on Sunday. They are Janice Moulton, Lynn Flickinger, Karen Bliss, Dede Morris, Mila Lyon and conductor Brad Hershey, who played double bass in the first concert.

The orchestra has evolved a great deal from those early days, and Sue Mendelsohn would no doubt be proud of the legacy she helped to create, said Andrew Moffat, who joined the orchestra in recent years. There are now more than 30 full-time members, and the group is tackling challenging repertoire from the heart of the classical canon.

“If anyone had told me that we would, someday, be playing the Tchaikovsky piece that we are playing for this concert I would have found it hard to believe,” said Flickinger. “We have grown in so many wonderful ways. Playing with the orchestra has been one of my delights!”

Sunday’s concert departs from the usual format of the entire group performing all the pieces, said flautist Mila Lyon. It more nearly resembles a chamber concert, she said, with the woodwind and brass playing a selection of short works, while the string section performs Tchaikovsky’s “Serenade for String Orchestra.”

The string section principals will also perform a movement of Smetana’s String Quartet No. 1, “From My Life.”