Our symphony concerts are held Sunday afternoons at 2 PM at Chimacum School Auditorium (91 W Valley Rd, Chimacum). There are open dress rehearsals the Friday evening at 7 pm before each Sunday concert – also at Chimacum School Auditorium.
PTSO concerts are free to attend (but not free to produce). Donations are always gratefully accepted at the door, through the mail or with PayPal.
Please reserve these dates on your calendar.
2024-2025 Concert Season Dates
Sundays at 2 pm, Chimacum Auditorium
October 27, 2024
December 8, 2024
February 23, 2025
April 27, 2025
PROGRAM DETAILS
October 27, 2024
FEATURING Seattle-based percussionist/bandoneonist/composer Ben Thomas started playing bandoneon in 2006, traveling to Argentina and working with tango musicians from across the world. He tours regularly with the Atlas Tango Project and can be heard on their most recent album, “Estaciones y Sueños”. He was a guest artist with the Eugene Opera in 2018 as the bandoneon soloist for Piazzolla’s “Maria de Buenos Aires”. Thomas has released five albums of original music on Origin Records, spanning jazz, chamber music, and tango. His music explores both traditional tango and how it continues to grow as it encounters new times and new influences. Following the lead of some of the pioneers of the current scene in Buenos Aires, such as Diego Schissi and Exequiel Mantega, Thomas builds pieces combining rhythmic intensity with lush harmonies, whimsy, and an emphasis on storytelling. He studied mathematics and music at Swarthmore College before going to the University of Michigan for a Master of Music in Contemporary Improvisation and the University of Washington for a DMA in Percussion Performance. Thomas has taught music theory, composition, and performance at Highline College since 2001.
PROGRAM
Antonín Dvorak, Carnival Overture
Florence Price, Dance in the Canebrakes
New piece for bandoneon and orchestra* Premiere with Ben Thomas (soloist and composer)
Jennifer Higdon, Blue Cathedral
Alexander Borodin, In the Steppes of Central Asia
December 8, 2024
FEATURING Emmy Ulmer, who is delighted to perform the Werner Thaerichen Timpani Concerto for the Port Townsend community! She fell in love with this beautiful town as a teenager with the Marrowstone Music Festival at Fort Worden. A graduate of the University of Washington, she earned a double degree in Bachelors of Arts and Music in Percussion Performance. A freelancer for over 30 years, Emmy has been a percussionist and timpanist with many different ensembles throughout the greater Puget Sound region. While living in Vienna, Austria, she had the opportunity to play with the Orchester der Technischen Universitaet Wien. Emmy has been the English
Captions Operator with Seattle Opera for over 20 years, a complex and rewarding job that fulfills another music side for her. The role she is most proud of is mom to her wonderful daughter, Anneliese. This is for her!
PROGRAM
Werner Thärichen, Timpani concerto with Emmy Ulmer
Georges Bizet, L’arlesienne Suites 1 and 2
February 23, 2025
Aaron Copland, El Salon Mexico
W. A. Mozart, Violin Concerto No. 3 (1st movement) with Anabel Moore (winner of the YAC)
Daniel Gall, Oatmeal Counterpoint* Premiere
Max Bruch, Swedish Dances
Off-the-grid on a small farm in the Pacific Northwest, composer and author, Daniel Gall, tends a garden of creative projects–with a new crop out each season.
Working remotely from his woodsy hermitage, over the years Daniel has collaborated with a host of musicians, ensembles, filmmakers, and choreographers/dance companies, including the Symbiosis Chamber Orchestra, the Glendale Philharmonic, the Definiens Project, the Vientos Trio, Mignolo Dance, Forza Dance, and many others. During the pandemic, he produced PROJECT SCREENDANCE, a social media series in which he collaborated with a different set of performers on a new dance film short each month, resulting in 23 films before calling it quits in Summer of 2022. Before he fled the grid nearly a decade ago, Daniel studied music at UCLA, and was the founder of the Los Angeles based new music organization and concert series, Synchromy.
In addition to his work as a composer, Daniel is a novelist who writes often-satirical and dystopian fantasies based on his experiences off the grid. He strives to connect his musical and literary works through fantastic themes and imaginative concepts, usually involving film or dance. For more about Daniel Gall and his work: danielgallcreativeworks.com
Brief Program Note About “Oatmeal Counterpoint”
1. Good Morning! (time to get up)
2. Oats for Breakfast
3. Exotic Fruit
4. Coffee Time
5. A Moment to Drift and Dream
6. Time to Face the Day
Nutritious, low-fat, high in fiber… Written over a bowl of oatmeal, Oatmeal Counterpoint is a suite of six dances for orchestra that act as a soundtrack to my morning routine. From oats to coffee, and including even a moment to dream, it’s a musical homage to the early hours, that fleeting space in our lives kept just for ourselves, before it’s time to let others in and face the day.
April 27, 2025
Heitor Villa-Lobos, Guitar Concerto with Mark Hilliard Wilson
John Williams arr. Victor Lopez, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
John Willaims arr. Sean O’Loughlin, Star Wars, The Force Awakens
John Williams and John Ottman arr. Victor Lopez, Superman Returns
John Williams arr Custer, Jurassic Park
AND FOR THE SUMMER…details to come