SEQUIM — Tell Elinore O’Connell she has “a pretty voice,” and she knows she’s missed the mark.
Let her know she transported you into a vivid memory of love, on the other hand, and you’re paying the highest compliment.
O’Connell, a Broadway performer who happened to come to Sequim this summer, is a storyteller above all. She lets the song — the story — take over.
O’Connell will practice her art in two concerts, both in the vintage jazz realm, this weekend. First comes her show with the “Friends of Brubeck” quartet celebrating the late Dave Brubeck at 7:30 p.m. Saturday; then it’s a musical matinee with O’Connell, pianist Linda Dowdell and saxophonist Craig Buhler at 2 p.m. Sunday.
The pair of performances will take place at Olympic Theatre Arts, 414 N. Sequim Ave., with tickets at $20 per concert or both for $35.
Saturday’s “Friends of Brubeck” concert is an encore following the sold-out show at Peninsula College last fall. In it O’Connell, Dowdell, Buhler, drummer Terry “the Groove King” Smith and bassist Ted Enderle offer their take on Brubeck tunes and what they call retro-pop, from “Take Five” to “You Go to My Head.”
O’Connell flies to Sequim each summer for the Teen Musical Theater Intensive, a two-week program she teaches with Dowdell. The intensive, which this year included 14 youngsters from Port Townsend, Sequim and Port Angeles, wraps today.
Teaching, Dowdell said, gives the teacher heightened focus for the concerts afterward.
In O’Connell’s words, “Oh, man, I really have to do what I’m saying.”
The women didn’t want to give away the whole set list for this weekend. But O’Connell promised that “The Trolley Song,” which Judy Garland made famous in the 1944 movie “Meet Me in St. Louis,” and Cole Porter’s “So in Love” are a couple in her repertoire.
The way “The Trolley Song” will be sung, she added, “is quite outrageous.”
This is O’Connell’s fourth summertime sojourn to the North Olympic Peninsula. In past years, she has given concerts at the Dungeness Schoolhouse with Dowdell, Smith, Buhler and Enderle, and become a fervent admirer of their playing.
“I’ll just go into whatever they’re giving me,” O’Connell said when asked what she’ll sing on Sunday.
“If we fall in love with something on Saturday,” she added, that song could very well be added to the matinee show.
For advance tickets to either or both performances, visit www.
OlympicTheatreArts.org or phone the theater between 1 p.m. and 5 p.m. today at 360-683-7326. The venue’s beverage bar opens an hour before the show, and if any tickets are left, they will be sold at the door Saturday night and Sunday afternoon.
