PORT ANGELES — There’s almost nothing like the feeling of stepping on stage, with the lights coming up and the orchestra surrounding you with sound.
The one similar sensation, said Sgt. First Class Martha Krabill, is that of jumping out of an airplane.
“When I was with the 82nd Airborne Division at the beginning of my Army career, I remember that intense focus I would feel,” taking a leap into the sky, she said.
Krabill, who grew up in Port Townsend with her musician parents, joined the Army in 2001 and has since become a vocalist with the U.S. Army Band. So she’s made her share of jumps, performed in quite a few concerts and traveled to Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan.
When Port Angeles Symphony conductor and music director Jonathan Pasternack saw Krabill on stage, he was knocked out.
“She is a uniquely gifted performer,” he said, “with fabulous stage presence” — not only a singer but a full-on entertainer.
This week, Krabill flies home to join the Port Angeles Symphony as featured soloist in two Pops & Picnic concerts: at 7 p.m. Friday and 1 p.m. Saturday at the Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St.
Tickets to Pops & Picnic are $20 including beverages, desserts and the concert. They’re on sale at Port Book and News in downtown Port Angeles and through the Symphony office at 360-457-5579 or portangelessymphony.org.
The annual events promise music from movies and Broadway, beloved classics and even some comic numbers.
There’s a showstopper that Pasternack is keeping a surprise. And there’s Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah,” which local composer Linda Dowdell has arranged for symphony orchestra.
“ ‘Hallelujah’ is so beautiful to me. The lyrics touch me so deeply,” Krabill said. As for the rest of her set, “Jonathan has been so open to different ideas I’ve had, and he has also selected a piece that will certainly challenge me, as it is out of my regular comfort zone.”
Most of all, Krabill said, she looks forward to sharing the stage with her parents.
Principal oboist Anne Krabill and bassoonist Dave Krabill, who live in Port Townsend and trek to Port Angeles several times a month to play in the Symphony, are part of both Pops & Picnic shows.
While she was growing up, taking lessons and performing every chance she got, Krabill’s mother and father were busy raising four children and running their oboe and bassoon reed firm.
“So I never really saw them play their instruments except for business-related things,” she recalled.
“Now that they have reignited their passion for music, it means so much to me that I have been invited to perform with them in their orchestra.”
Heather Ray is another featured soloist. The Port Angeles Symphony’s concertmaster for the past seven seasons, she is moving to Bellingham, where her husband James Ray, former director of orchestras in the Port Angeles School District, has accepted a professorship at Western Washington University.
For her final performance with the orchestra — at least for a while — Heather will offer John Williams’ theme from “Schindler’s List.”
She sees herself as a kind of conduit for this music, “a hauntingly beautiful piece, charged with so much emotion,” she said.
To round out the Pops program, Pasternack is going for maximum variety: “Les Toreadors” from Bizet’s “Carmen,” Debussy’s “Petite Suite,” Sousa’s “Liberty Bell March,” Menken’s Overture from “Beauty and the Beast,” Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter” and P.D.Q. Bach’s humorous “1712 Overture.” And for the finale, Krabill and the orchestra will play “America the Beautiful.”
For more about the orchestra’s 2019-20 season of concerts in Port Angeles and Sequim, see portangelessymphony.org or visit the Symphony’s Facebook page.
Violinist and concertmaster Heather Ray will give her last performances with the Port Angeles Symphony this Friday and Saturday. (Port Angeles Symphony)
