Blog - Page 7 of 9 - Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra

April 16, 2019August 11, 2019

TUSKER BEHRENFELD, Violist

Tusker began playing the viola in seventh grade. Having started the violin at the age of four, he fell in love with the sound of the viola the very first time he heard it played. Though he an still rip a Scottish fiddle tune on the violin, his heart is with the viola.

This spring he will be travelling to Ellensburg to compete in the State solo competition on viola.

This is Tusker’s second year with the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra and his first year as principal violist for the Port Townsend High School Orchestra.

He enjoys singing and has sung in the Port Townsend Youth Chorus for the past seven years.

Tusker is on the high school track team, Knowledge Bowl team, PTHS robotics team, and is in the Students for Sustainability club. He enjoys mountain biking, scuba diving, travel, backpacking, fishing, and designing and building just about anything.

April 9, 2019August 11, 2019

OVERTURE IN C MAJOR by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel 1805-1847

Fanny Mendelssohn was born in Hamburg, Germany, the oldest of four children of a distinguished family headed by Abraham Mendelssohn. Her brother Felix was, as was she, a musical prodigy and truly gifted composer. She was first given piano instruction by her mother and was taught in the “Berliner-Bach” tradition. By the age of thirteen Mendelssohn could play all twenty-four preludes from Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier by memory. Her brother Felix grew to discover she was a far superior pianist than was he. People began to comment, “She plays like a man,” which was the highest praise for a woman at that time.

Mendelssohn was limited by the prevailing attitudes of the day toward women. Her father wrote in 1820, “Music will perhaps become a profession for your brother Felix, but for you it can and must be only an ornament.” Felix, however, was much more supportive of his sister’s music and had a number of her pieces published under his own name. She continued to compose privately even after she married painter Wilhelm Hensel in 1829.

April 9, 2019August 11, 2019

TOM BERG, Violinist

Checking in at 97, Tom is the oldest player in the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra.

Tom began playing violin when he was about eight years old. His first violin was handmade by his great-grandfather in Norway. His parents purchased Tom’s second violin in about 1938 from a violin pawn shop in Portland, Oregon. It was a good violin; in fact, it is the same violin that Tom plays today.

During Tom’s career as a licensed mechanical engineer, he played with the Bremerton Symphony for more than two decades.

After moving to the Olympic Peninsula, Tom played with the Port Angeles Symphony for around a dozen years, and for the past 25 years he has played with the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra.

February 19, 2019August 11, 2019

CARMEN SUITE NO. 1 by Georges Bizet, 1838-1875

French composer Georges Bizet’s “Carmen,” written in 1874, became the world’s most performed opera. Despite its eventual success, Bizet died in Paris of a “broken heart” (a ruptured artery) at age thirty-seven due to the initial “failure” of the work.

Some critics considered this piece “indelicate” in its depiction of the opera’s subject matter — the downfall of a soldier after Carmen seduces and abandons him. However, the story appealed greatly to the Parisian theatre-goers.

The “Carmen Suite” contains music derived from the opera and was published between 1882 and 1887, years after Bizet’s death.

The opening prelude introduces the ominnous theme associated with both Carmen and her fate at the hands of her lover, Don Jose. The following aragonaise (a dance from the region of Aragon in Spain) is the festive yet sinuous music that opens the final act of the opera as crowds arrive for a parade outside the bullring. An intermezzo, a serenely melancholic section based on the prelude to the final act, leads to a seguiedille that Carmen sings to seduce Jose. The suite ends with a jaunty military march, “Les Dragons d’Alcala,” followed by the famous march “Les Toreadores,” the entry of the bullfighters, which is actually the opening piece of the opera.

February 19, 2019August 11, 2019

SARO BABIKIAN, Guitarist

Saro Babikian was born in Damascus, Syria, in 1995. He started playing the classical guitar at age 10. He attended the Solhi Al-Wadi Conservatory of Music in Damascus. In 2012 he performed at the Damascus Opera House in a concert hosted by the Ministry of Culture for outstanding students of the conservatory. Later that same year he moved to Los Angeles and continued his guitar studies with the renowned Armenian guitarist Sarkis Turgutyan. In 2015 he was admitted to the University of Southern California Thornton School of Music’s classical guitar program under the instruction of Scott Tennant and William Kanengiser. Saro also takes flamenco lessons with Adam Del Monte at USC. He graduated with honors with his Bachelor of Music degree in classical guitar in 2018 and has been awarded a scholarship from USC Thornton to continue his naster’s studies in classical guitar performance.

Saro has participated in numerous masterclasses with renowned musicians and guitarists such as David Russell, Pepe Romero, and Paul O’Dette. He has earned several awards in various guitar competitions including Honorable Mention at the Gohar and Ovanes Andriassian Classical Guitar Competition, and First Prize at an international music competition in Serbia. In 2017, Saro was invited as a guest artist to the 3rd Yerevan International Guitar Festival, in Yerevan, Armenia. He has composed several pieces for the guitar, including Tremolo for classical guitar, and has completed arrangements of a set of Armenian folk songs by Gomidas for guitar and voice. Saro is regularly invited to Armenia to hold guitar classes and to play concerts.

You can follow Saro Babikian on Facebook or Linked In.

February 12, 2019August 11, 2019

PAVANE POUR UNE INFANTE DEFUNTE by Maurice Ravel, 1875-1937

(Pavane for a Dead Princess)

Maurice Ravel was born in 1875 in Ciboure, France, a small Basque town near the Spanish border. He and his parents moved to Paris when he was very young. By the age of seven, he was taking piano lessons and studying harmony and composition. In 1889, at age fourteen, he passed the entrance exam into the Conservatoire de Paris by playing music by Chopin.

Ravel won the first prize in the Conservatoire’s piano competition in 1891, but otherwise did not stand out as a piano student. His ambition was to become a composer, but his early works were not well received by the faculty and he was expelled from the Conservatoire in 1895. In 1897 he was re-admitted and began to study with Gabriel Fauré who considered Ravel’s work “very imaginative.”

It was during this time, in 1899, that Ravel composed his first widely known piece: “Pavane pour une Infante Defunte.” The pavane was originally written for piano and it was played everywhere “by young ladies who did not play the piano very well.”

Eleven years later, Ravel orchestrated the piece into the form we hear today, a version featuring the tonal intricacies of a symphony.

February 5, 2019August 11, 2019

FANTASIA PARA UN GENTILHOMBRE by Joaquin Rodrigo, 1901-1999

(Fantasia for a Gentleman)

Joaquin Rodrigo is the most popular Spanish composer of the 20th century. Although he wrote music for many different instruments and ensembles, he is best remembered for his pieces for the guitar.

At age three, he completely lost his eyesight after contracting diptheria. His blindness did not diminish his musical abilities. He began to study piano and violin at age eight, and harmony and composition at age sixteen. He was accepted into the Conservatoire de Paris where he was a pupil of Paul Dukas.

Rodrigo’s own compositions were written in Braille, then transcribed into standard musical notation for publication. His most famous works, both for Spanish guitar and orchestra, are “Concierto de Aranjuez” and “Fantasia para un Gentilhombre.”

Rodrigo composed “Fantasia for a Gentleman” in 1954 at the request of guitar virtuoso Andres Segovia. It is in four movements based on short dance melodies from a 17th century instructional guitar manual by Spanish composer Gaspar Sanz. Many believe that the “gentleman” referred to in the title is Sanz. But Rodrigo probably intended this concerto to honor Segovia, the guitarist.

This piece was premiered on March 5th, 1958, in San Fransisco, with Segovia as the soloist.

January 29, 2019August 11, 2019

PAVANE, OP. 50 by Gabriel Fauré, 1845-1924

Gabriel Fauré was born in the south of France in 1845. At age nine, he was sent to Paris to be trained as a church organist and choirmaster. Among his teachers was Camille Saint-Saens, who became a lifelong friend. As a young adult, Fauré made a modest living as an organist and teacher, leaving him little time for composition.

By middle age ha had become the director of the Conservatoire de Paris (the Conservatory of Music in Paris), and during the summers he would retreat to the countryside to relax and concentrate on composing.

On an 1887 creative outing, Fauré wrote to his wife, “while I was thinking about a thousand different things of no importance whatsoever, a kind of rhythmic theme in the style of a Spanish dance took form in my brain… This theme developed itself, became harmonized in different ways, changed and modulated, in effect, it germinated itself.”

That theme became Fauré’s Pavane Op. 50, and it recieved its premiere in Paris the following year (1888). The pavane is bnased on one basic melody first introduced by solo flute with pizzicato strings imitating a guitar accompaniment. Its pattern and form were used by Fauré’s student at that time, Maurice Ravel, for his “Pavane pour une infante defunte.”

December 1, 2018August 11, 2019

GWEN FRANZ, Violist

As a performer, recording artist, teacher, and scholar, Gwen Franz is a diverse violist of multiple musical traditions. In 2017, she was awarded a Doctorate of Musical Arts from the University of Washington in classical viola performance, which also included studies within the jazz and ethnomusicology departments.

Her research on improvisation and oral traditions resulted in her thesis topic, “The Homeric Answer: How By-Ear Learning and Improvisation Enhance the Musicianship of Classical Performers.”

Dr. Franz has been featured as a concerto soloist and chamber musician throughout the Pacific Northwest, has toured throughout the United States and Chile.

She has also performed with eclectic musicians such as Darol Anger and Eugene Friesen. In 2013 she released two albums, Airoso, with classical guitarist Hilary Field, and Douce Ambiance, with jazz violinist Michael Gray and cellist James Hinkley.

Her many years of professional orchestra experience include performing with the Seattle Symphony, Northwest Sinfonietta, Grand Rapids Symphony, Lansing Symphony and Evansville Philharmonic. She recently moved to Port Townsend with her husband, Ernie Franz. (Dec 2018)

September 26, 2018September 27, 2019

Past Soloists – Master List

Linda Bach, December 2003, December 2001
Saro Babikian, February 2019
Nancy Beier, April 2013
Lorraine Burdick, December 2003, December 2001
Michael-Ann Burnett, October 2007
Kyle Campbell, December 2010, April 2009, October 2004
Kim Clark, October 2006, October 2002
Paul Creech, February 2015
Ray Chirayath, February 2017, December 2015
Christopher Cox, December 1998
Dennis Crabb, May 2008
Roger Crook, February 2006
Matthew Daline, October 2018, October 2008
Jann Degnan, March 2003
Chuck Easton, December 1999
Gwen Franz, December 2018
Larissa Freier, April 2018
James Garlick, March 2002
Arthur Grossman, October 2009
Carl Hanson, February 2016
Michael Helwick, October 2014
Vicki Helwick, February 2017, April 2014, December 2012, October 2011
Barbara Henry, December 2010, December 2007, December 2006
Judy Johnson, February 2010, April 2005, October 2000, October 1999
Beatrice Kaufman, October 2009
Hollie Kaufman, February 2012
Anne Krabill, October 2015, February 2011
Ben Krabill, February 2008
David Krabill, October 2015
Paul Krabill, February 2009
Trent LaCour, February 2015
Sharon Annette Lancaster, April 2013
Lisa Lanza, April 2016, October 2010, May 2003
Jaclyn La Rue, May 2002
Andy Mackie, April 2010
Charlie May, May 2004
Elizabeth McKinnon, February 2009
Mary Lou Montgomery, February 2000
Phil Morgan-Ellis, February 2014
Hillary Nordwell, December 2000
Zachary Nordwell, May 2001
Peninsula Singers, December 2014, April 2011, February 2007, February 2004, October 2001
Karl Perry, February 2016, February 2004
Bill Peters, December 2007
Stefan Puchalski, December 2005, December 2002
Rainshadow Chorus, December 2009
Alan Rawson, April 2006
Robin Reed, February 2017, October 2016
Jessica Reid, February 2009
David Ritt, February 2004
Susan Roe, April 2013, April 2012
Anson Ka Lik Sin, October 2013
Kristin Forssen Smith, December 2016, December 2010, December 2006, October 2003
Marilyn Sterbick, December 1998
Christopher Taber, February 2005
Michael Thomsett featured composer, February 2001
Diane Vaux, December 2016, February 2016
Miles Vokurka, October 2012
Christina Walters, December 2008
Kim Walters, December 2008
Cynthia Webster, February 2017, December 2015
Joel Yelland, December 2012