CHIMACUM — The Port Townsend Community Orchestra will present its April concert, “Forgotten Heroes,” at 2 p.m. Sunday.
The concert will be in the auditorium at Chimacum High School, 91 West Valley Road.
Admission will be free, but donations will be welcomed.
The concert will feature great works that for various reasons are not performed as much as they once were, organizers said.
They include the Overture in C by Fanny Mendelssohn, William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony and a music suite from the movie “The Sea Hawk” by Erich Korngold.
Mendelssohn, according to Encyclopedia Britannica, was as talented as her brother Felix and served as his chief musical advisor. However, in her time — she was born in 1805 in Germany — she was expected to have no career and stay home.
While not able to travel or promote herself, she wrote more than 500 compositions, mostly for piano and chamber ensembles.
Her one known orchestral work is Overture in C Major that the orchestra will play on Sunday.
“It is a work that mixes splendor, showy sections with light, restrained and delicate passages,” organizers said in a news release.
Still was an early 20th century African-American composer.
He got practical experience arranging for Paul Whiteman, W.C. Handy and Artie Shaw.
He broke several barriers by being the first African-American to conduct an American symphony orchestra and have his symphony performed by a major orchestra.
His works include symphonies, operas, ballet and movie scores. His work was performed around the world. His Symphony No.1, the Afro-American Symphony, combines classical symphonic form with blues progressions and African rhythms.
It has been said that Korngold’s music sounds like movie music. There is a good reason for this, organizers said; he wrote so much of the movie scores in the 1930s and 1940s that he defined what movie music was supposed to sound like.
A double Oscar winner, he wrote music for more than 20 stage and screen productions.
His music to the movie “The Sea Hawk” led to a resurgence of his popularity when an album of “The Sea Hawk” was released as a Classic in 1972. The orchestra will play a selection of music from “The Sea Hawk.”
For more information, see www.porttownsendorchestra.org.
