PORT ANGELES — A galaxy of singers and pianists, plus a jazz trumpeter and a teenage violinist, will come together for the Monday Musicale Scholarship Benefit, an annual fundraiser for local music students.
Mistress of ceremonies Nancy Beier, an internationally known opera singer who lives in Port Angeles, will welcome music lovers to Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave., at 2 p.m. Sunday.
Admission to the concert, which will run about an hour and 40 minutes, is $10, or $5 for children 12 and younger.
Sunday afternoon’s first set will be served up by the Grand Olympics Chorus, an a cappella ensemble belonging to Sweet Adelines International, the worldwide barbershop-singing sisterhood.
Director Judie Sharpe said the 25-voice chorus will offer “Aquarius,” “Chordbusters,” “If You Love Me” and “Hooked on Classics.”
Then comes a jazz set, with trumpet man Ed Donohue and pianist Linda Dowdell.
Now teaching and performing in Sequim, Port Townsend and Port Angeles, Dowdell was musical director of Mikhail Baryshnikov’s White Oak Dance Project as well as the Mark Morris Dance Group.
The pianist promises that the Dowdell-Donohue duo will play a set of three jazz standards, including two that aren’t heard too often.
Young violinist
Coming from Seattle to fill out the first half of Sunday’s concert is Josie Cheung, a student at the Seattle Conservatory of Music.
Now 13, Cheung has been playing for her violin for nine years. She made her debut at age 11 with the Seattle Festival Orchestra last year.
She’ll play Bach’s Partita No. 3, Pablo Sarasate’s “Gypsy Airs” and other pieces on Sunday, with Seattle pianist Irina Ahkarin at her side.
Ahkarin “is a tremendous accompanist,” said Gary McRoberts, organizer of Sunday’s event.
World-traveled artist
After intermission, another world-traveled artist will step up: Deborah Rambo Sinn, founder of the Olympic Music School in Sequim and a pianist who’s given concerts and master classes across North America and Europe and in China and Australia.
Rambo Sinn will take a break Sunday afternoon from writing her book, Beyond the Notes: A Pianist’s Guide to Music Interpretation — to be published by Oxford — to play Mozart’s Sonata in F Major.
The Olympic Express big band is set to deliver the finale, with numbers including “Hunting Wabbits,” “Jazz Police” and “Let the Good Times Roll,” with Teresa Pierce stepping up as vocalist.
The band will close with “America the Beautiful” by Tom Kubis.
“This is one of the most beautiful arrangements of this piece you will ever hear,” Olympic Express saxophonist Steve Lingle said.
As a whole, he added, Sunday’s event “will be a very exciting concert with some of the top talent from the Peninsula.”
The Monday Musicale club, formed in 1968, has a dual mission: providing high-quality music in the Sequim-Port Angeles community and helping young people pursue music as a vocation.
Via 141 scholarships so far, it has awarded $80,000 to local music students.
Also, as its name suggests, the group presents a lunchtime program of live music every third Monday of the month at Queen of Angels Church, 1007 S. Oak St.
For more details about the noon performances, phone 360-681-7135.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
