PORT ANGELES — This Saturday, with 75 singers and an orchestra of 82 musicians, the Port Angeles Symphony will go full-out, promised Jonathan Pasternack, artistic director and conductor.
“Hearing a live symphony orchestra perform is one of the most exciting things you can experience in music,” he said, adding, “for me, it is the most exciting thing.”
Pasternack and the orchestra, which brings together players from across and beyond the Olympic Peninsula, will present their Family Concert at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave., at 7:30 p.m.
It will mark the start of the community orchestra’s 93rd season, which includes six full-orchestra performances through winter and spring.
Tickets are available at portangeles symphony.org, at Port Book and News in downtown Port Angeles and at the door. Concert-goers also are invited to Pasternack’s quick chat about the evening’s music at 6:30 p.m.
As with all full orchestra concerts, the public is invited to the final dress rehearsal at 10 a.m. Saturday. Tickets are on sale on the website or at the door.
“The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” from Benjamin Britten, Aaron Copland’s “Hoedown” and Korngold’s Violin Concerto are on the program, along with Leonard Bernstein’s “Make Our Garden Grow,” featuring those 75 singers in the Sequim and Port Angeles High School choirs.
“This is a special arrangement for four-part chorus,” Pasternack said, adding there’s a stirring passage in which the choirs sing a cappella.
Also part of the concert: “Huapango,” Jose Pablo Moncayo’s masterpiece of dance rhythms and joyous melodies from Mexico.
The guest artists joining the orchestra are Franziska Pietsch, who is coming from her home in Europe to play the Korngold piece, and KING-FM announcer Lisa Bergman, the narrator of “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra.”
“The Family Concert is a thrill,” Bergman said, “and a welcoming invitation to enjoy familiar tunes, toe-tappers, tear-jerkers, fairy tales, cowboys and a trip to outer space.”
By that, she means Custer’s “Star Trek through the Years,” also on Saturday’s program.
As for the “Young Person’s Guide,” Bergman calls it an up-close-and-personal experience of the various sections of the orchestra. Each group “comes to life, revealing their personalities — sometimes laughable, sometimes surprising,” she said.
The Port Angeles Symphony percussion section is expanded for this piece. Sequim-based pianist Linda Dowdell, harpist Liz Landis, bass drummer Dorthe Grube Porter and cymbals player Kate McDermott — a Port Angeles musician, cook and author — all will take the stage.
Pietsch, for her part, is poised to perform for the second time with the Port Angeles Symphony. The celebrated violinist took her debut solo turn with the orchestra last November.
“I am always dazzled by Franziska,” Pasternack said.
“Not only does she have complete technical command of the violin, her artistic imagination is incredibly vivid and compelling.”
Saturday’s Family Concert is the first of 12 performances by the Port Angeles Symphony this season. They include intimate chamber concerts in October, January and May in Sequim and Port Angeles, and Puccini’s grand opera “Tosca” in concert on May 2.
Season subscriptions are available at portangelessymphony.org, while patrons also can contact the symphony office at 360-457-5579 or by email at pasymphony@olypen.com.
Pasternack, embarking on his 11th season with the symphony, said he still marvels at the musicians’ verve and eagerness to take on masterworks that challenge them.
“Seeing all of these different people from the community gather,” Pasternack said, “and form an artistic family to express the music together, is so inspiring to be part of.”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Port Townsend.
Violinist Franziska Pietsch is coming from her home in Europe to perform with the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra on Saturday. (Franziska Pietsch)
