Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra
Our mission is to entertain, inspire and engage our community through musical excellence and affordable concerts.
Our talented soloists come from around the world to play with us at the Port Townsend Symphony Orchestra.
Seattle resident and Canadian mezzo-soprano Sharon Annette Lancaster is a gifted singer and musician actively performing in the Pacific Northwest.
Solo engagements have included performances with the Bellevue Philharmonic and Bellevue Chamber Chorus, the Philharmonia Northwest, Seattle Bach Choir, Seattle Symphony, Seattle Choral Company, Kirkland Choral Society and the Music Center of the Northwest.
She holds a Masters degree in organ and voice performance and teaches privately.
(April 2013)
Miles Vokurka was born in Kladno, Czechoslovakia. His mother was an American citizen living abroad and his father was a musician and music store owner. To escape the communist take-over of his country, he and his family emigrated to Chicago in 1948 just in time for him to enroll in an American kindergarten.
He started piano lessons at an early age and then began playing the clarinet in 4th grade in his grade-school band. As a teenager he studied clarinet with Jerome Stowell of the Chicago Symphony and was a member of the Youth Orchestra of Greater Chicago.
He was accepted into Northwestern University as an engineering student, but quickly transferred into the School of Music (where he seemed to be spending most of his time anyway). He was an active member of the NU Student Band Staff working with directors John Paynter and Cecil B. Wilson, and played B-flat soprano and E-flat sopranino clarinet in the NU Symphonic Wind Ensemble.
Miles received a Bachelor of Music Education degree as well as a Masters in Clarinet Performance from Northwestern, and spent over 20 years teaching and directing high school instrumental music in the Chicagoland area.
Miles and his wife, Susan, live a pastoral life in rural Port Townsend with their menagerie of assorted critters: their dog Samantha, 4 cats, 5 chickens, 2 guinea pigs, a parakeet, and pygmy goats Thelma & Louise.
Susan Roe’s radiant soprano voice has been heard throughout California, the Northwest and the East Coast with chamber music ensembles, in oratorio and opera festivals. She has soloed with the Inland Empire Symphony and Master Chorale, the Pasadena Chorale and Orchestra, the Redlands Symphony, the Riverside Master Chorale, the Monterey Bay Chamber Orchestra, the Cabrillo Opera Festival and the Bach Aria Festival in New York.
In 2007, Ms. Roe had the pleasure of performing with Dewey Ehling and the Peninsula Singers. She is delighted to have the opportunity once again to work with Maestro Ehling in his role as conductor of the Port Townsend Orchestra.
Ms. Roe made her international operatic debut in the role of Musetta at the Cairo Opera House in 1996 in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of Giacomo Puccini’s LaBohème.
Reviewers of Ms. Roe’s operatic performances praise her “impressive vocal gift, which she uses with beauty and subtlety” and attest that she is “as effective an actress as she is a singer.” Other credits include performance fellowships awarded by the Gluck Foundation (2002-2005), a recital funded by the Riverside Arts Foundation and several performances of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Susannah, funded by a California State University grant-award, in which she was recognized for “Excellence in Theatre.”
In 2004, Ms. Roe earned a Doctor of Musical Arts in Vocal Performance from the University of California, Los Angeles. In addition to performing, she has taught at the University of California, Riverside, UCLA and California Baptist University, Riverside.
(April 2012)