PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra will start a new season on Sunday at Chimacum High School.
Maestro Tigran Arakelyan will lead the free concert at 2 p.m. at 91 West Valley Road, with donations welcome. An open dress rehearsal will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at the Chimacum High School auditorium.
The concert features local composer Karl Bach and cellist Pamela Roberts with a world premiere of Bach’s Romance for Violincello and orchestra.
This piece is the result of discussions that Roberts and Bach had over the past few years. The summer band played some of Bach’s music, and Bach conducted his Petite Suite for Orchestra with PTSO in February.
Roberts was awarded a three-year fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival and became faculty cellist at the University of Puget Sound. She was principal cellist of the Tacoma Symphony and 5th Avenue Theatre Orchestra and has performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony. She is principal cellist of the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra and a founder/artistic director of the PTSO Chamber Music Series.
Bach had a long musical career, starting in the Navy and continuing with a degree in music from George Mason University in Fairfax, Va. After teaching music until he retired in 2001, he moved to Port Townsend and served as the director of the summer band from 2001-17. He was a member of the Port Townsend Orchestra and served as its president for two years.
Also on the program is Danzón #2 by Arturo Márquez. Márquez was born in the Sonoran Desert in the colonial town of Alamos, Mexico, to a musical family. In junior high school, he began to play musical instruments and compose.
“My adolescence was spent listening to Javier Solis, sounds of mariachi, the Beatles, Doors, Carlos Santana and Chopin,” he said, according to a press release.
After completing studies at the Mexican Music Conservatory, he received a scholarship to study in Paris. A subsequent Fullbright scholarship enabled him to complete studies at the California Institute of the Arts. In the 1990s, he was introduced to the world of Latin Ballroom Dancing, which led him to compose a series of Danzones.
Danzón #2 has become so popular that it is considered the second national anthem of Mexico.
Rounding out the program will be Franz Schubert’s Symphony #8, “Unfinished.” Written in 1822-23, the two-movement work was not premiered until 1865. There are several theories as to why the symphony was never completed, but it was sent as a thank you gift to the Graz Music Society for giving Schubert an honorary diploma. It has always been well received with some identifying it was Schubert’s most beautiful work, organizers said.
For more information, visit ptsymphony.org.
