PORT ANGELES — On the heels of travel to Spain to conduct the Orquesta de Ciudad Granada, Jonathan Pasternack is about to begin his 10th anniversary season with the Port Angeles Symphony.
“It seems like the years literally flew by,” said Pasternack, who led orchestras all over the United States before accepting the position here in 2015. He is conductor and artistic director of the symphony, which was founded in Port Angeles in 1932.
This trip to Spain, one of several he’s made to Europe to record with orchestras in recent years, pointed up a few things.
“It’s very interesting,” Pasternack said.
“I’m working with a wonderful professional orchestra abroad, and it makes me homesick for my own,” the community orchestra in Port Angeles.
“The collegial atmosphere, the family atmosphere we have, informs my work wherever I go. That was a surprise,” he added.
The conductor feels more open and not so formal.
His years with the Port Angeles Symphony have given him gifts: “First and foremost, the enthusiasm of the community and the amazing positive spirit within the orchestra. That’s very, very inspiring.”
Alongside 10 guest soloists and the 65-member symphony, Pasternack has assembled 12 full orchestra and chamber concerts for the new season. It will start with Family Pops on Sept. 28 and conclude with a performance of a brand-new concerto by Navajo composer Connor Chee on May 17, 2025.
Tickets and details about concerts, music and soloists can be found at portangelessymphony.org, while the symphony office can be reached at 360-457-5579 or by email at pasymphony@olypen.com.
The full orchestra plays at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center; the chamber concerts take place at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Port Angeles and Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim.
Season subscriptions are available at significant discounts, Pasternack said. For example, the Music Lover Series encompasses nine concerts for as low as $100 for seniors. Patrons who prefer to attend the symphony’s Saturday morning dress rehearsals can go to six of them, September through May, for $40.
After Family Pops, the first full Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra performance features acclaimed German violinist Franziska Pietsch. Just last month, Pasternack, Pietsch and the orchestra in Granada, Spain, recorded Édouard Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole and Richard Strauss’ Violin Concerto.
“The Strauss is a little gem in violin literature and largely unknown. It’s technically brilliant and features enchanting music,” Pietsch said in an interview.
She didn’t hold back when praising her fellow musician.
“Jonathan possesses an extraordinary ability to interact with the orchestra,” she said. He’s a calm professional, and at the same time, “he exudes warmth.”
And when Pietsch steps forward as a soloist, Pasternack has provided “a fantastic musical foundation upon which I can freely soar.”
Another celebrated violinist will come to the North Olympic Peninsula to perform as a soloist this season: Erin Hennessey, one who got her start in Port Angeles’ public schools. An alumna of Port Angeles High School and the Oberlin Conservatory, Hennessey now performs with Ireland’s National Symphony Orchestra in Dublin; she is studying for her doctorate at the Royal Academy of Music in London.
Hennessey performed with the Port Angeles Symphony and then-conductor Adam Stern from 2011 until 2013, when she graduated from high school.
Hennessey said her new collaboration with Pasternack has already started on the right foot. She and the conductor together chose Peteris Vasks’ Vox Amoris as the piece she will perform with the Port Angeles Symphony Chamber Orchestra in January.
“I’m looking forward to every part of it,” Hennessey said.
“Vox Amoris” is “a really, really beautiful piece. And it’s about love. What could be better than that?”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer who lives in Port Townsend.
Box:
Symphony highlights
• Sept. 28, 7 p.m.: Family Pops, featuring light classics and music from the movies and Broadway, plus Robert X. Rodriguez’s “A Colorful Symphony” from “The Phantom Tollbooth” with narrator Todd Ortloff;
• Oct. 11-12, 7 p.m.: Violinist-violist Matthew Daline and pianist Jennifer Chung play Mozart, Brahms, Liszt, Hovhaness and Florence Price in recital;
• Nov. 2, 7:30 p.m.: The full orchestra and soloist Franziska Pietsch play Richard Strauss’ Violin Concerto and Lalo’s Symphonie Espagnole, plus Hindemith’s Symphonic Metamorphosis;
• Dec. 14, 7:30 p.m.: The full orchestra’s annual holiday concert featuring Venezuelan cellist Gregorio Nieto;
• Jan. 17-18, 7 p.m.: Violinist Erin Hennessey returns home to perform Vasks’ Vox Amoris plus Stravinsky’s Apollo and Boccherini’s Symphony in D;
• Feb. 15, 7:30 p.m.: Principal cellist Traci Tyson plays Bruch and Popper, plus Mahler’s Symphony No. 5;
• March 22, 7:30 p.m.: Charlotte Marckx returns for the Brahms Violin Concerto;
• May 3, 7:30 p.m.: Pianist Anna Petrova and Beethoven’s Emperor Concerto;
• May 16-17, 7 p.m.: Bassoonist Jacqueline Wilson and a new concerto by Navajo composer Connor Chee plus Vivaldi,
Elgar’s Serenade for Strings and Estonian composer Heino Eller’s “Five Pieces.”
