Pam Dassenko to be Honored at SLO Symphony Ball

Local Dentist, musician, and Co-Concertmaster Selected as 2nd Annual Symphony Honors Recipient
Local dentist and violinist Pam Dassenko will be the recipient of the Second Annual San Luis Obispo Symphony Honors Award, to be presented at the SLO Symphony Ball & Auction this February. Now in its 21st year, the gala, black-tie event will be held on Saturday, February 28th, 2009 at 6 p.m. in the Grand Ballroom at the Embassy Suites Hotel.
A 1974 American Federation of Music Congress of Strings Scholarship winner, Dassenko has been playing the violin since the age of seven. Having studied with Claire Hodgkin and most recently with Oliver Steiner at the Eastman School of Music, she played with the Riverside and Redlands Symphonies before moving to San Luis Obispo. Dassenko has been playing with the San Luis Obispo Symphony for more than 20 years and currently serves as co-concertmaster. She has been a member of the Festival Mozaic (formerly Mozart Festival) orchestra since 1988, and also performs with Pacific Repertory Opera and the Cuesta Master Chorales orchestras.
“Pam was president of the San Luis Obispo Youth Symphony for five years, has been a consistent and generous financial donor, and has often hosted fundraising events in her home,” said Steve Bland, Symphony Ball Chair for 2009. “She has participated in all four Symphony tours and is a wonderful ambassador for the Symphony and a strong advocate for classical music. One name kept coming up from almost everyone who made a suggestion [for this year’s honors award], and that name was Pam Dassenko.”

Established last year to honor those who have demonstrated longstanding commitment to the success and vision of the Symphony; and who have served with dignity, honesty, humility, and professionalism – this award first honored Clifford Chapman and Gene Shidler at last year’s ball.

“I am touched and humbled by this honor,” said Dassenko, who credits her flourishing career as a dentist and her husband, Tom Miller, for supporting the uncountable number of hours she has devoted to her musical passions. “Tom was very tolerant of my ‘obsession’ with the issues at stake in the survival of the Youth Symphony, and the late night hours it often involved,” she said.
Now entering her 29th year in dentistry, Dassenko graduated in 1980 from Loma Linda University School of Dentistry where she won both the American Academy of General Dentistry Award and the President’s Award that year. Since then she has been a teacher in the Restorative and Prosthodontics departments at Loma Linda; has completed post-graduate work in full mouth restoration and aesthetic dentistry; and is a surgical and prosthodontic graduate of the Misch Implant Institute. Among Dassenko’s many professional affiliations, she is a Fellow of the International Congress of Oral Implantologists.
The theme for this year’s Symphony Ball is “La Belle Epoque” meaning “the beautiful era” – a golden age between the late 1890s and the First World War when peace, innovation, and the arts flourished in Europe. Guests will travel back in time to Paris, France for a “belle soiree” of dining and dancing; and are encouraged to bid on live auction items that will feature Central Coast wines, gala parties, exciting getaways, fine jewelry and more, in a setting decorated with golden tapestries and glittering lights.