Music & Composers Archives - Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra

November 1, 2023December 4, 2023

Cellist Pamela Roberts premieres Romance for Cello and Orchestra by local composer Karl Bach

Composer Karl Bach and cellist Pamela Roberts explore parts of Karl’s Romance for Cello and Orchestra. (Photo by Karl Perry)

Maestro Tigran Arakelyan will lead a free concert on October 29, 2023 at 2 p.m. at 91 West Valley Road. An open dress rehearsal will be held at 7 p.m. Friday at the Chimacum High School auditorium.

In the summer of 2022, Pamela Roberts attended a rehearsal of the Port Townsend Summer Band during which Karl Bach was conducting three of his compositions for a performance later in the month. Pamela was impressed with Karl’s music.

At that concert later in the month Pamela suggested to Karl that he write a piece for cello and band or cello and orchestra. In February Karl conducted his “Petite Suite for Orchestra” with the Port Townsend Symphony and that afternoon Pamela and Karl talked more about a piece featuring the cello. The result was “Romance for Violoncello and Orchestra.”

Quilcene cellist Pamela Roberts has been a faculty cellist at the University of Puget Sound. She was awarded a 3-year fellowship to the Aspen Music Festival and became principal cellist of the Tacoma Symphony and 5th Avenue Theatre Orchestra. In addition, she has performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony.

She is principal cellist of the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra and a Founder/Artistic Director of the PTSO Chamber Music Series.

Karl Bach had a long musical career, starting in the Navy and continuing with a degree in music from George Mason University. After teaching music until his retirement in 2001, he moved to Port Townsend and served as the director of the Summer Band from 2001 until 2017. He was a member of the Port Townsend Orchestra and served as its president for two years.

Over the years, Karl has written music for both the Summer Band and the Port Townsend orchestra. He was intrigued by Pam’s request for a concerto and took some musical ideas that he has had for several years and incorporated them into this romance.

While creating this music, Karl and Pamela talked frequently, with Pamela giving insights into how certain phrases work on a cello. Both agree that the final version is improved with these insights.

Also on the program is Danzón #2 by Arturo Márquez. Márquez was born in the Sonoran Desert in the colonial town of Alamos, Mexico, to a musical family. In junior high school, he began to play musical instruments and compose.

“My adolescence was spent listening to Javier Solis, sounds of mariachi, the Beatles, Doors, Carlos Santana and Chopin,” he said, according to a press release.

After completing studies at the Mexican Music Conservatory, he received a scholarship to study in Paris. A subsequent Fullbright scholarship enabled him to complete studies at the California Institute of the Arts. In the 1990s, he was introduced to the world of Latin Ballroom Dancing, which led him to compose a series of Danzones.

Danzón #2 has become so popular that it is considered the second national anthem of Mexico.

Rounding out the program will be Franz Schubert’s Symphony #8, “Unfinished.” Written in 1822-23, the two-movement work was not premiered until 1865. There are several theories as to why the symphony was never completed, but it was sent as a thank you gift to the Graz Music Society for giving Schubert an honorary diploma. It has always been well received with some identifying it was Schubert’s most beautiful work, organizers said.

For more information, visit ptsymphony.org.

(Text by Jay Bakst)

October 9, 2023December 4, 2023

Pamela Roberts performs world premiere of Romance for Cello and Orchestra by Port Townsend composer Karl Bach

PORT TOWNSEND — The Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra (PTSO) will present its fall concert at 2 p.m. Sunday, October 29 at the Chimacum High School Auditorium.

In addition to the concert, there will be an open dress rehearsal at 7 p.m. Friday, October 27 at the auditorium, 91 West Valley Road.

Both events are free with donations gratefully accepted at the door. No tickets are required.

Acclaimed PTSO conductor and artistic director Tigran Arakelyan will lead the concert, which will feature the orchestra’s principal cellist, Pamela Roberts, as soloist. She will perform the world premiere of Romance for Cello and Orchestra by Port Townsend composer Karl Bach.

In the summer of 2022 Roberts attended a rehearsal of the Port Townsend Summer Band when Karl Bach was conducting three of his own compositions. She approached him after the rehearsal.

“I encouraged Karl to consider writing a solo work for cello because I felt the melodic style of his writing would be genuinely appreciated by cellists. He has surpassed my expectations with this beautiful piece. It is melodic, flowing and at times bombastic. The fast passages are challenging and he doesn’t hold back, taking the soloist into the higher reaches of the instrument. I love it and I think the audience will too.”

Bach explained, “Years ago I was improvising on the piano and three distinct themes emerged. These melodies somehow remained in my brain and so many years later this opportunity to write a piece for cello provided just the place to use them.”

Bach had a 20-year career in The U.S. Navy Band, Washington, D.C. in which he served as a vocalist, percussionist and administrator. He retired as a Senior Chief Petty Officer. He earned a Master of Arts in Teaching degree from Lewis and Clark College and taught in schools in Virginia and Oregon before his retirement to Port Townsend. Bach joined the Port Townsend Summer Band as a percussionist and served as their conductor for 17 years. He performed for 13 years as timpanist and 2 years as board president with the Port Townsend Community Orchestra (now PTSO) and was also a member of the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra, Port Angeles Symphony, Bainbridge Symphony and the vocal ensemble, Rain Shadow. Bach began composing in 2000 and has more than 40 compositions listed in the on-line catalog MY SCORE on the website of J.W. Pepper and Son. His works include music for concert band, brass band, orchestra and chorus.

Roberts was faculty cellist at the University of Puget Sound. She has performed as soloist with the Seattle Symphony, Bremerton WestSound Symphony, Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra and the Aspen Music Festival, where she was awarded a 3-year fellowship. As a chamber musician Roberts worked with the Philadelphia String Quartet, Northwest Chamber Orchestra and Seattle Early Music Guild. She was principal cellist of the Tacoma Symphony and Seattle’s 5th Avenue Theater Orchestra. She is currently principal cellist of the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra and a founder and artistic director of the PTSO Chamber Music Series. Pamela earned her Masters Degree from the University of Washington, where she studied cello with Eva Heinitz and Toby Saks. She lives in Quilcene with her husband Howard Gilbert, a retired Seattle Symphony percussionist and jazz drummer.

Also on the program is Danzon No. 2 by the Mexican composer Arturo Márquez. The Danzón dance form originated in Cuba. This composition is one of the most popular and frequently performed Mexican contemporary classical orchestral pieces.

Symphony #8 in B minor by Franz Schubert will also be featured. Commonly known as the Unfinished Symphony, it is a musical composition that Schubert started in 1822, but left with only two movements—though he lived for another six years. A scherzo, nearly completed in piano score, but with only two pages orchestrated, also survives.

Arakelyan shared his feelings about the upcoming concert, “I am excited to collaborate with Karl and Pamela again. I have worked with both of them throughout my time with the PTSO, but I have not worked with them in collaboration. Karl wrote this beautiful piece for cello and orchestra in collaboration with our fantastic principal cellist Pamela. I am excited to be in the middle of this magnificent project, working with the orchestra and Pamela to bring Karl’s newest work to life for our community. This premiere is not to be missed.”

For additional details and updates visit ptsymphony.org.

Photo: Port Townsend composer Karl Bach watches solo cellist Pamela Roberts execute the beginning passages of Romance for Cello and Orchestra. (Photo by Karl Perry).

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 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 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 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.

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.

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 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.