PORT ANGELES — After a three-year hiatus, the Port Angeles Symphony Chorus is about to step onto the stage and sing.
Along with the Port Angeles Symphony Chamber Orchestra and featured organ soloist Noah Michael Smith, the chorus will give two concerts this week.
First is the 7 p.m. performance at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 Lopez Ave., Port Angeles, this Friday; then comes the concert at Sequim’s Trinity United Methodist Church, 100 S. Blake Ave., at 7 p.m. Saturday.
Tickets are at portangeles symphony.org, at Port Book and News, 104 E. First St., Port Angeles, and at the door of both venues. As with all Port Angeles Symphony concerts, those 18 and younger are admitted free with a ticketed patron.
This performance encompasses about an hour of music, said conductor and music director Jonathan Pasternack. It is music, he said, that will lift up listeners with its beauty.
The evening begins with Handel, Baroque master, and his Concerto for Organ in G minor. Smith is the featured soloist on this piece — and on the very different one that follows it: the G minor organ concerto from 20th century French composer Francis Poulenc.
“Noah is a brilliant young musician whom we are fortunate to have landed in our community,” said Pasternack. Smith moved from New Haven, Conn., in 2021 to become Holy Trinity Lutheran Church’s director of music ministry.
Smith, whose pronouns are they/them, said they’re “extremely passionate about Baroque music,” added they pride themselves on being a well-rounded musician with exposure to many types of music.
“I look forward to presenting a dramatic and varied program that features the pipe organ, which is a somewhat unpopular instrument that is recently regaining popularity,” Smith said.
These concerts will highlight three other vocal soloists: soprano Sarah Moran and baritone Gregory Lewis of Chimacum and Nathan Rodahl of Port Angeles. The Poulenc concerto features timpanist Sonya Shipley of Port Townsend, also “a terrific musician,” Pasternack said.
He added that harpsichordist Jeremy Briggs is volunteering to perform with the chamber orchestra — and driving in from Puyallup to play the continuo part in the Handel concerto.
The finale will show off the Port Angeles Symphony Chorus, organist Smith and the 19-member chamber orchestra: Schubert’s Mass in G major.
“The chorus has been a wonderful ‘instrument’ to work with,” said Joy Lingerfelt, the founding director of the ensemble. The Port Angeles Symphony Chorus now has 24 singers set to perform.
“The program is perhaps an unusual feast, with two organ concerti, displaying the diversity an organ can provide, and a choral Mass,” Lingerfelt said. The Schubert, she added, “is lyrical and beautiful.”
Smith, for their part, promised that the Handel and Poulenc concertos will surprise the listener, with a range of texture and color.
“We are lucky to have an orchestra here that presents a program which spans the Baroque to the 20th century, with a dedicated director [Pasternack],” who chooses not only cherished music but also pieces that push boundaries.
This week’s chamber orchestra concerts complete the Port Angeles Symphony’s 90th season: a season in which Pasternack sought to wow audiences with extra-grand programming.
His hope is simply that “people will get blown away by what they hear.”
Later this month, Pasternack and the symphony will send out a whole new brochure previewing the new season to start in September. Music lovers who want to be added to the symphony’s mailing list can send their addresses to pasymphony@olypen.com or phone 360-457-5579.
