On these nights, there’s a certain electricity, an exhilaration, said conductor Jonathan Pasternack.
Pops & Picnic, the pair of concerts tonight and Saturday, bring together the 65-piece Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, one award-winning soloist and an 85-voice choir of singers from across Clallam County.
“I look forward to the energy in the room,” Pasternack said. “We’re all at a banquet together.”
The banquet is served at “unique venues for music performance,” he noted: Tonight at the Vern Burton Community Center, the former gymnasium at 308 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles, and Saturday at the Sequim unit of the Boys & Girls Clubs of the Olympic Peninsula at 400 W. Fir St.
Show time both nights is 7 and music lovers are invited to bring picnic suppers; tickets are $20 including soft drinks, coffee and dessert served up by symphony volunteers.
To purchase, call the symphony office at 360-457-5579 or stop by the Joyful Noise Music Center in downtown Sequim or Port Book and News in Port Angeles.
The orchestra includes a variety of community members: veteran musicians such as oboist Anne Krabill of Port Townsend and cellist John Melcher of Port Angeles — alongside teenage counterparts such as violinist Shinia Kildall.
Shinia, 15, is an agile player who comes to orchestra rehearsal right after soccer practice. Her favorite piece on the Pops & Picnic program is Gliere’s “Russian Sailor’s Dance.”
In the weeks leading up to the concerts, she’s joined the orchestra in rehearsing the program’s classical and popular music, from Mussorgky’s “Night on Bald Mountain,” Holst’s “Country Song” and Fauré’s “Sicilienne” from “Pelleas and Melisande.”
Then come Richard Rodgers’ suite from “Oklahoma!,” “America the Beautiful,” Sousa’s “The Thunderer” and Elmer Bernstein’s March from “The Great Escape.”
The two Pops & Picnic concerts also promise a song from Aaron Copland’s opera about coming of age, “The Tender Land.”
The Sequim High School Select Choir and Vocal Ensemble, numbering 45 singers, and the 40-voice Port Angeles High School Symphonic Choir will sing “The Promise of Living,” with the full orchestra beside them.
“High school students rarely have the chance to sing with a live orchestra,” said John Lorentzen, director of Sequim High’s choirs.
“This is something they will always remember.”
Lauren Waldron, a recent graduate of Port Angeles High who won a music scholarship to the College of Idaho, will appear as guest soloist.
The violist, winner of the symphony’s Nico Snel Young Artist Competition, has chosen to play Max Bruch’s “Kol Nidrei,” a Jewish prayer.
Completing the program: the Overture from “Candide” by Leonard Bernstein, the conductor, composer and educator who said, “I cannot live one day without hearing music.”
Orchestras around the world have paid tributes like this to Bernstein, whose centenary is this year.
This weekend begins the Port Angeles Symphony’s 86th season of performances.
For information about the orchestra and chamber concerts from October through May in Port Angeles and Sequim, see www.PortAngelesSymphony.org.
Violist Lauren Waldron is a guest soloist at Pops & Picnic this Friday and Saturday. (Diane Urbani de la Paz)
