“I love nature, I love life, I’m young and here’s what I can do.” These sentiments sparkle bright and clear in Felix Mendelssohn’s famed Violin Concerto, says soloist Monique Mead.
She’ll step up to play it in the Port Angeles Symphony’s first full-orchestra concert of the 2019-2020 season at 7:30 p.m. this Saturday, Nov. 9.
The public is invited to the evening concert and to the final rehearsal held at 10 a.m.; both are at the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.
Tickets to the evening performance are $15 for students and seniors, $18 general admission and $25 to $35 for premium reserved seating, while youngsters 16 and under are admitted free when accompanied by a paying adult.
Get tickets at brownpapertickets.com, Port Book and News in downtown Port Angeles and at the door. Come early for conductor/music director Jonathan Pasternack’s brief pre-concert chat at 6:40 p.m.
Admission to the morning rehearsal is $7 per person, with the same free admission for those 16 and younger.
Mead, an internationally known violinist who lives in Pittsburgh when not traveling to concerts on various continents, is making her fifth trip to Port Angeles for this one.
The Mendelssohn work is “the quintessential violin concerto,” she says, adding that it’s “lovely, songful and delightful with a little bit of fireworks.”
Pasternack will lead the orchestra in the Mendelssohn as well as in a short opening piece, Glinka’s folksy “Kamarinskaya,” and the evening’s finale, Tchaikovsky’s Fifth Symphony in E minor.
Trombonist Matt Grey, a Sequim native who now teaches and performs around the greater Puget Sound region, is one of the players with a significant part in this symphony.
Also joining the orchestra are guest concertmaster Marjory Noble, violist Lauren Waldron of Bellingham and bassoonist Keith Bowen of Port Townsend.
For more information about Saturday’s rehearsal and concert and the coming season, call the symphony office at 360-457-5579, email to PASymphony@olypen.com or visit PortAngelesSymphony.org.
