PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra will open its new season with a concert at 2 p.m. Sunday.
The free event, directed by Tigran Arakelyan, will be in the auditorium at Chimacum High School, 91 West Valley Road. The public also is welcome to attend the final dress rehearsal at 7 p.m. Friday.
The concert features Ben Thomas, a Seattle-based percussionist, bandoneonist and composer, and will premiere one of his new works.
The bandoneon is a concertina-like instrument popular in tango music that Thomas uses when he tours with the Atlas Tango Project.
Thomas has taught music theory, composition and performance at Highline College since 2001; he has released five albums of original music spanning tango, jazz and chamber music.
The program will open with the “Carnival Overture” by Antonin Dvorak.
The second piece, “Dances in the Canebrakes” by Florence Price, originally was written for piano and later orchestrated by William Grant Still. The suite has three movements, Nimble Feet, a rag; Tropical Noon, a slow drag; and Silk Hat and Walking Cane, a cakewalk dance.
Thomas’ “Three Pieces for Bandoneon and Orchestra” also is in three movements: Sonia’s Mask, Promise of Morning and Red Trimmed Tide.
Also on the program is “Blue Cathedral” by contemporary classical composer Jennifer Higdon.
The program ends with “In the Steppes of Central Asia” by Alexander Borodin, a tone poem, commissioned for the silver Jubilee of Tsar Alexander II in 1880.
For more information, visit www.ptsymphony.org.
