AUBURN – While he asserts that “Music and the arts are completely intertwined with the economic and social vibrancy of a community,” the conductor of the Midcoast Symphony told area business leaders Thursday morning, “You won’t ever make any money by investing in a symphony.”

The benefits are realized in many other ways, said Maestro Rohan Smith, who spoke to a large crowd at the November breakfast meeting of the Androscoggin County Chamber of Commerce. He is in his fourth year as conductor and music director of the popular volunteer orchestra.

“A healthy community and a healthy society expresses itself through the arts,” he said following the talk at Martindale Country Club.

“It’s a sign of social cohesion. Even though the arts are very expensive, when you have a vibrant artistic life, you’ll find that people will move into your area, they will go out to restaurants, they will enjoy being in the center of town,” he said.

“The arts speak to us in different languages and they do not speak to us in a factual, logical, prosaic manner,” Smith told the gathering of business people.

Whether through a painting, music or sculpture, “it takes us out of the moment and makes us aware of something that may make us look up, or into the distance or inside ourselves,” he said.

Although it is based in Brunswick, the Midcoast Symphony performs in Topsham and Lewiston several times a year, and the conductor had strong praise for the orchestra’s Lewiston venue.

“Here, we have the privilege to play in the magnificent Franco-American Heritage Center,” Smith continued. “It takes the breath away,” he exclaimed, and added that nationally known guest artists of the Midcoast Symphony, including pianist Michael Lewin, who appeared there with Smith last Saturday, have the same reaction.

Ten years ago, Smith founded the Kowmung Music Festival in Australia, which is dedicated to bringing together outstanding international musicians to play chamber music in unusual venues in New South Wales.

He told the audience in Auburn Thursday morning that those sites in New South Wales are mountainous, like Maine, but unlike the beautifully restored St. Mary’s Church in Lewiston, the intentionally untraditional venues on the other side of the world have included cattle sheds and limestone caves.

In addition to his role with the Maine orchestra, Smith is on the faculty of Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire where he is director of the Symphony Orchestra, the Chamber Orchestra, and the Forrestal-Bowld Music Center.

During his talk, Smith emphasized the importance of giving arts a strong place in schools.

In Maine, he said, “the picture is really pretty good. I’m very impressed by the high level of music programs in the schools.”

Smith told the chamber members that “education is part of it, but somehow investment in the vitality of symphony orchestras is another part of it.”

He said attempts to popularize symphonies have failed “every time they have tried to dumb down or compromise” classical music.

He urged all community members to support the arts, and challenged them to be sure that “Education is No. 1.”