Blog - Page 6 of 9 - Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra

June 4, 2019August 11, 2019

OTTO SMITH, Concertina Soloist

Otto Smith is a Port Townsend resident and a long-time percussionist in the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra.

This June, Otto will play concertina in the west coast premiere of James Cohn’s “Concertina Concerto” accompanied by members of the chamber orchestra.

Otto moved to Port Townsend from Seattle in 1979, and he’d been playing Irish music on concertina for about a year or two by then. He’d been playing backup guitar in an Irish band, and someone lent him a concertina, which he eventually purchased. He’s been playing concertina ever since — over forty years, now.

May 14, 2019November 26, 2019

CARL HANSON, Violinist

Carl Hanson enjoys the variety of alternating between playing principle second violin and playing in the first violin section of the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra.

He’s one of several original members still performing with this group; he also sang with the “Port Townsend Orchestra Singers” when Dick Ballou was conductor. Carl served on the orchestra’s board for its first fifteen years and was its president during the transition that brought Dewey Ehling to serve as our Artistic Director/Conductor in 1995.

Though Carl enjoys playing a number of stringed instruments — regularly performing a program he calls “Living Life With Strings Attached” — the violin has been his favorite since sixth grade. While a junior and senior at Lakes High School in Lakewood, Washington, Carl performed with a group of five violinists doing strolling music for special events, including two banquets at the old Olympic Hotel in Seattle. In college he played viola in a string quartet.

May 11, 2019August 11, 2019

HOLBERG SUITE by Edvard Grieg, 1843-1907

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈɛdvɑɖ ˈhɑːɡərʉp ˈɡrɪɡː]; 15 June 1843 – 4 September 1907) was a Norwegian composer and pianist. He is widely considered one of the leading Romantic era composers, and his music is part of the standard classical repertoire worldwide. His use and development of Norwegian folk music in his own compositions brought the music of Norway to international consciousness, as well as helping to develop a national identity, much as Jean Sibelius and Bedřich Smetana did in Finland and Bohemia, respectively.^[1]

Grieg is the most celebrated person from the city of Bergen, with numerous statues depicting his image, and many cultural entities named after him: the city’s largest concert building (Grieg Hall), its most advanced music school (Grieg Academy) and its professional choir (Edvard Grieg Kor). The Edvard Grieg Museum at Grieg’s former home, Troldhaugen, is dedicated to his legacy. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edvard_Grieg

May 11, 2019August 11, 2019

TICO TICO Zequinha de Abreu, 1880-1935

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

José Gomes de Abreu, better known as Zequinha de Abreu (September 19, 1880 – January 22, 1935) was a Brazilian musician and composer.

Abreu was born in Santa Rita do Passa Quatro, São Paulo state. He is best known for the famous choro tune “Tico-Tico no Fubá” (1917), whose original title was “Tico-Tico no Farelo”. Other well-known tunes he wrote were “Branca” and “Tardes de Lindóia.”

Because of the lack of written tradition, Tico-Tico is played in various melodic versions all over the world. Abreu died in São Paulo, aged 54. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zequinha_de_Abreu

May 7, 2019August 11, 2019

ANNE KRABILL, Oboe Soloist

Anne Krabill holds the title of principal oboe of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Port Townsend Community Orchestra. In addition she has performed as principal oboe with the Northwest Symphony in Seattle, the Bainbridge Symphony, the Peninsula Dance Theater in Bremerton, the Sooke Philharmonic in British Columbia, and was a guest performer with the 82nd Airborne Division Band in North Carolina.

Prior to moving to Washington, Anne was the principal oboist with the Atlantic Symphony Orchestra in Halifax, Nova Scotia. She taught oboe and chamber music at Dalhousie University, and performed frequently for the CBC with the ASO and as a soloist and chamber musician. Anne and her husband, David, a bassoonist, own a reed manufacturing business and sell oboe and bassoon reeds internationally.

She is a native Canadian and received a Bachelor of Music from Mount Allison University. Her oboe studies continued in Stuttgart, Germany with Gustav Steinert, and in London, England where she won a scholarship to study with the legendary oboist, Leon Goossens.

May 4, 2019August 11, 2019

SYMPHONY IN E-MINOR, Op. 32 by Amy Beach 1867-1944

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Amy Marcy Cheney Beach (September 5, 1867 – December 27, 1944) was an American composer and pianist. She was the first successful American female composer of large-scale art music. Her “Gaelic” Symphony, premiered by the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 1896, was the first symphony composed and published by an American woman. She was one of the first American composers to succeed without the benefit of European training, and one of the most respected and acclaimed American composers of her era. As a pianist, she was acclaimed for concerts she gave featuring her own music in the United States and in Germany. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amy_Beach

April 26, 2019August 11, 2019

CONCERT: FORGOTTEN HEROES

It has been another wonderful year of music making with the orchestra and a you to present these performances to the enthusiastic audiences in Port Townsend, Jefferson County, and the region. Always happy and grateful for your presence, support, and encouragement.

I have always been fascinated with composers and pieces that are not often heard and this program is an example.

The Afro-American Symphony by William Grant Still is the first symphony composed by an African-American composer. It was, in his time, performed by a number of leading American orchestras but has not been regularly performed in the past few decades.

The Overture by Fanny Mendelssohn is the only orchestra-alone work she wrote, although she has written several oratorios. The Overture was not published until 1994, almost 150 years after her death. For this reason, the Overture is only available for rental if an orchestra is interested in performing it. This is yet another reason to support our orchestra: so we can keep playing pieces that are rarely heard.

April 23, 2019August 11, 2019

AFRO-AMERICAN SYMPHONY by William Grant Still, 1895-1978

William Grant Still is the most influential African-American composer of the early 20th century. He was born in Woodville, Mississippi, in 1895 and started his musical career as an oboist in the pit orchestra of an All-Black musical, “Shute Along”, in 1921. He began composing when he was awarded a scholarship to attend the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, this during the era of Jim Crow segregation when Oberlin was one of just a few major schools to admit black students.

His 1931 “Afro-American Symphony” was one of the first works by a black composer to be performed by a major symphony orchestra. Its first performance met with controversy in the press because some critics felt the piece belonged with jazz groups like the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, the group that premiered Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.” There certainly is that distinct classical jazz sound and feel of Gershwin’s music in this symphony. In Still’s own words he “wanted not to portray the higher type of colored Americans, but the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears and who have not responded completely to the transforming effect of progress.”

April 23, 2019August 11, 2019

MAYA DOW, Trumpet

Maya started playing the violin when she was five years old, then switched to trumpet in fifth grade, which she has stuck with ever since.

Now, as a freshman in high school, she plays with the Port Townsend High School band.

During middle school she was in the All-State band, and this year she is going to compete in the State solo competition inn Ellensburg.

This spring, Maya will be playing trumpet in the school play, Cabaret.

Besides music, Maya loves to write screenplays and argue on the PTHS mock trial team, which she has done for the past two years. She also plays basketball, volleyball, and is on the Knowledge Bowl team at school.

April 16, 2019August 11, 2019

THE SEA HAWK by Erich Wolfgang Korngold 1897-1957

The Sea Hawk, 1940 (loosely based on the novel by Rafael Sabatini)

Erich Wolfgang Korngold was born in May of 1897 in Brno, Austria-Hungary. He was a child prodigy and son of eminent music critic Julius Korngold. By his early teens he had composed a successful ballet (Der Schneemann — The Snowman), a piano sonata played by Arthur Schnabel throughout Europe, and two operas conducted by Bruno Walter. By age 23 he became the conductor of the Hamburg Opera, and by 33 he was a professor of music at the Vienna State Academy.

At the request of his Austrian friend, director Max Reinhardt, and due to the rise of the Nazi regime, Korngold moved to the U.S. in 1934 to write music for Hollywood films. His first score was for “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” (1935). His next work was for “Captain Blood” (1935), which helped boost the career of Errol Flynn, a Hollywood newcomer and an actor Korngold would work with in years to come. Korngold received an Oscar for both “Anthony Adverse” (1936) and “The Adventures of Robin Hood” (1938). Overall, he wrote music for sixteen Hollywood films. Along with Max Steiner (“King Kong”, “Casablanca”, “Gone With The Wind”) and Alfred Newman (“Mark of Zorro”, “Wuthering Heights”, “Hunchback of Notre Dame”), he was one of the founders of great film music.