For a couple of years running, downtown Washington was transformed by a truly special event. It brought people of all walks of life down to Festival Park to simply sit and listen.

It was the day(s) the North Carolina Symphony played. Music wandered through the streets of downtown. It drifted over the Pamlico River, the notes traveling up the Tar. One of those days was sunny — perfect weather for a perfect outing. The other of those days was overcast and raining, just a little bit, enough so that mid-performance, hundreds of colorful umbrellas opened almost simultaneously. The weather did not stop these concertgoers. They knew exactly the treat they were getting in a free concert by the first state-sponsored orchestras in the United States.

It was far more than a free concert. The events on both those days drew plenty of people to downtown Washington to shop at the stores, to eat at the restaurants. It pulled together families, friends and out-of-towners to listen to beautiful music, in a beautiful place.

Those concerts were free to the public, but it wasn’t free to those sponsoring the event. Washington-Beaufort County Chamber of Commerce assisted with that, but the main bill was paid by PotashCorp-Aurora in a show of generous community support.

Leading the orchestra was a man by the name of William Henry Curry. While the music was the main event, in between pieces Curry would entertain the crowd with tidbits of history about composers, the symphony and himself. Just as much a showman as a conductor, Curry filled the gaps with interest and laughter.

Curry steps down as the symphony’s resident conductor this year, at the end of the 2016 Summerfest Season. It marks an end to 20 years of concerts, paid, free and educational. Outside of longtime symphony music director Benjamin Swalin, Curry has led more education concerts than any conductor in symphony history. His ability to communicate with audiences of all ages greatly strengthened the symphony over the past two decades, according to symphony President and CEO Sandy Macdonald.

The symphony will head east to New Bern this weekend for one of three concerts celebrating Curry’s tenure. Sunday, the orchestra will perform Tchaikovsky’s 5^th Symphony at the New Bern Riverfront Convention Center. Unlike the performances on the Washington waterfront, this one won’t be free to the public.

For some, it would be worth the drive, and the ticket price, to bid farewell to a man who has made a tremendous difference in the cultural life of North Carolina, according to the symphony’s music director Grant Llewellyn.

For others, it’s enough to recall those nights under the stars, under the clouds, on the Washington waterfront, when Curry led the music and the event from which memories are made.