HANKS, Sybil Ann

Sybil Anna Vilas Hanks (1908-1969) was one of Madison’s wealthiest women in the 1950s and 1960s. Sybil was a successful amateur composer, several of whose works were performed by the orchestra in the 1920s through the 1950s. (She was one of several local composers - including Alexius Baas, and figures from the University like Charles Mills and Oskar Hagen – whose music the Civic Symphony played in those days.) In Sybil’s case, she was initially a composition student of the orchestra’s first conductor, Sigfrid, Prager, and Prager remained a mentor to her until he retired to Argentina in 1948.