PORT ANGELES — Clallam and Jefferson county music students — as young as 4, on up to age 22 — are invited to enter the Port Angeles Symphony’s Nico Snel Young Artist Competition, to be held in person for the first time since January 2020.
Applications, available at www.portangelessymphony.org under the Education link, must be postmarked by Jan. 14.
Entrants will perform a concert-quality piece of music on Jan. 28 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 Lopez Ave., Port Angeles.
Each piece must be 10 minutes or less. The judges, including Port Angeles Symphony Music Director and Conductor Jonathan Pasternack, violinist Jory Noble and another judge to be announced, will offer personalized feedback to the students following their performances.
As in past years, the public is invited to come see any of the competitors in action; admission is free to the event starting at 9 a.m.
“We’re very excited to be in person again,” said Pasternack, who last year had to judge the competitors’ performances on videos they sent him.
In the 2023 event, the top three musicians in two age categories will win cash prizes, thanks to anonymous donors and the symphony board of directors.
The senior Young Artist Competition, open to players up to age 22, offers $500 for first place, $250 for second and $200 for third.
The Junior Young Artist Competition, for musicians 14 and younger, awards $250 for first place, $125 for second and $75 for third.
Another Port Angeles Symphony education program, the Adventures in Music school visits, is also returning to a live, in-person format. For the next round of this 30-year-old program, multi-instrumentalist and educator Angie Tabor of Port Townsend has formed a band, the Sonic Messengers, to travel the region.
Tabor and friends will bring the sounds of Cuban salsa, steelpan music from Trinidad and a variety of European percussion instruments to elementary schools across the North Olympic Peninsula.
This coming February, students from Neah Bay to Sequim and from Chimacum to Quilcene and Brinnon will see and hear Tabor’s Sonic Messengers.
“We’ll do almost 20 concerts in two weeks. It’s a whirlwind,” said Al Harris, longtime director of Adventures in Music.
AIM is a self-supporting program under the Port Angeles Symphony umbrella, noted Pasternack. Individuals and businesses including D.A. Davidson, First Security Bank and Sound Community Bank, as well as Port Ludlow Performing Arts in Jefferson County, have helped fund the traveling performers.
All of AIM’s offerings come with written materials for students and teachers, Harris added.
To see the performers’ videos from the past two years along with those materials, visit portangelessymphony.org and click on Education and then Adventures in Music.
“It’s just wonderful that both the Young Artist Competitions and Adventures in Music have emerged from the video format to live, face-to-face performances,” Pasternack said.
“They are such an important part of the Port Angeles Symphony’s mission to share the joy of music-making with young people.”
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Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend.
