PORT ANGELES — From Carnegie Hall to Havana, James Garlick of Port Angeles has spread his life’s passion — music — far and wide.
Garlick, who will join the Onyx Chamber Players for a concert at Maier Performance Hall at Peninsula College, 1502 E. Lauridsen Blvd., at 7 p.m. Saturday, is just back from Cuba, where he and the 90-member Minnesota Orchestra enjoyed a musical exchange.
With Cuba’s Amadeo Roldan Youth Orchestra and the Cuban National Choir, Garlick and his ensemble played together for just under a week, a historic meeting that included performances of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony — and of the U.S. and Cuba national anthems.
“The entire audience rose to their feet and started singing,” Garlick said.
“It was an incredible moment . . . the universal language of music takes over.”
Tickets to the Maier Hall performance are $15 for general admission and $5 for students.
Seattle trio
Garlick also is the violinist in the Onyx Chamber Players, a Seattle trio with internationally known pianist David White and Seattle Baroque Orchestra cellist Meg Brennand. The ensemble is known for interpreting early music with modern instruments.
For Garlick, Saturday’s Maier Hall performance has him playing here for the first time in many years.
The concert itinerary travels from a Schubert piano trio to a Brahms violin sonata that Garlick calls “one of the most sweet, understated pieces.”
The second half of the performance will be given over to Mendelssohn’s Piano Trio in C minor, with its stormy opening scene and speedy scherzo.
PA graduate
Garlick, the son of the now-retired Dr. Stan Garlick, founder of Family Medicine of Port Angeles, graduated from Port Angeles High School in 2002, having gone to Carnegie Hall with the Roughrider Orchestra and director Ron Jones in 2001.
That trip — and Jones — are among his strongest inspirations.
In 2009, Garlick, a graduate of Ohio’s Oberlin Conservatory and the Juilliard School in New York City, got to rejoin the Port Angeles High School orchestra as a violin soloist — again at Carnegie Hall.
Garlick’s recent trip to Cuba wasn’t his first.
In 2012, he went to Havana and Cienfuegos as conductor of Tacoma’s Northwest Sinfonietta and led an ensemble of Cuban and U.S. musicians in the Mendelssohn Octet.
Garlick has been talking for a couple of years now with the Peninsula College Music Department’s David Jones about playing at Maier Hall, the acoustically pristine, relatively new space on campus.
Jones made it happen at last for this, the last performance in the 2014-15 Maier Hall Concert Series.
When he’s not on the road, Garlick lives in St. Paul, Minn., with his wife, Emily James.
The two met at Port Angeles High, where they shared a music stand in Jones’ orchestra.
James is also a violinist and now an English professor at the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul.
For more information about the Maier Hall concert, see www.pencol.edu or phone 360-417-6405.
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
