PORT ANGELES — A Port Angeles High School graduate who has gone on to an international career will perform with more than 70 musicians at a Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra on Saturday.
The Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, led by conductor Jonathan Pasternack, will perform “Hungarian March” from “Faust,” as well as the Symphony No. 3 by Johannes Brahms.
The concert will be at 7:30 p.m. at Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave.
It will be preceded by a short talk by Pasternack at 6:40 p.m.
Tickets are $12 for seniors and students; $15 general admission; $20 and $30 for premium reserved seating. Youngsters 16 and younger are admitted free when accompanied by adults.
Ticket outlets include Port Book and News in downtown Port Angeles, The Joyful Noise Music Center in downtown Sequim and the Port Angeles Symphony office, 360-457-5579.
Music lovers also can attend the final rehearsal, which starts at the same venue at 10 a.m. Saturday. Admission to this working rehearsal is $5, or $10 per family.
Bela Bartok’s Concerto for Viola will star Cheryl Landry Swoboda, a 1987 Port Angeles High School graduate who now is a violist with the Southwest German Chamber Orchestra. She has a touring schedule that includes Northern Ireland, Sweden and Finland this spring.
Swoboda was 13 when she took up the viola. Her mentors were Phil and Deborah Morgan-Ellis, longtime music teachers in Port Angeles and Sequim.
These were people who “showed me the sky was the limit,” she said, “and I could do anything I truly believe in.”
Swoboda will play alongside violists Phil Morgan-Ellis, Tyrone Beatty, Karen Hart, Meghan Stinard and Lauren Waldron.
Waldron, a senior at Port Angeles High, took first place in the North Olympic Peninsula-wide Young Artist Competition, hosted by the Port Angeles Symphony, earlier this year.
She also has won the National Federation of Music Clubs’ Wendell Irish Viola Award, and plans to pursue a music degree at one of the five universities to which she’s been accepted.
“Lauren has everything it takes to make it in the music profession,” Pasternack said.
James Ray, the orchestra director at the high school, has called Waldron “not just a good viola player, but an artist.”
Brahms’ Third Symphony is the centerpiece of the concert.
It will “take every ounce of musicianship we can give it, and still ask for more,” Pasternack said.
“It’s just gorgeous music, and for me it’s just the top of its class.”
See www.Port AngelesSymphony.org for more information about the orchestra’s 85th season of concerts.
Violist Lauren Waldron of Port Angeles High School, winner of two major awards so far this year, is among the 70 musicians in the Port Angeles Symphony. (Diane Urbani de la Paz)
