PORT ANGELES — Both girls remember falling head over heels in love. Yes, each was only 3 years old; one lived in Tyler, Texas, the other in Evanston, Ill. Their paths would later converge in Seattle and, this week, in Port Angeles.
Pianist Paige Roberts Molloy and violinist Elisa Barston will pursue their love of music in performances Friday and Saturday presented by the Port Angeles Symphony, which is starting its 90th anniversary season this fall.
The duo will offer an evening of Mozart — “a beautiful sonata,” Barston said — plus music of French Baroque composer Jean-Marie Leclair and Romantic master Johannes Brahms.
This is a program they chose just this past Tuesday — to replace the previously scheduled concerts of Stravinsky’s “A Soldier’s Tale.” Unforeseen technical issues made it necessary to cancel that piece, said Port Angeles Symphony conductor and music director Jonathan Pasternack.
He contacted Barston, a principal second violinist with the Seattle Symphony who has performed on the North Olympic Peninsula several times, and asked if she might be available to come and perform a different program — and it turned out she and collaborative pianist Molloy are delighted to make the trip.
“I love coming out there,” Barston said. “It’s a wonderful vibe and stunning environment,” where the audiences aren’t shy about showing their appreciation for live music.
Molloy and Barston’s recitals mark the Port Angeles Symphony’s return to Clallam County’s intimate classical music venues — where its chamber ensembles haven’t played since January 2020.
The performances are:
• At 7 p.m. Friday at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, 301 E. Lopez Ave., Port Angeles;
• At 7 p.m. Saturday at Trinity United Methodist Church, 100 S. Blake Ave., Sequim.
Tickets are available at www.portangelessymphony.org, at Port Book and News in downtown Port Angeles, and at the door. While the price is $15, youngsters 18 and younger are admitted free with a ticketed patron. More information is available by phoning the symphony office at 360-457-5579 or emailing pasymphony@olypen.com.
“It’s kind of miraculous the way it worked out,” Barston said.
She has a rare week off from performing with the Seattle Symphony and Seattle Opera. And this is an ideal chance, she added, to play with Molloy, who “is marvelous.”
“We’re pretty good pals,” added Molloy, who has performed with Barston across the region over the past decade.
She’s carried on a love affair with the piano ever since her grandmother invited her to try it. Once she sat down on that bench, “nobody could get me to get up,” Molloy recalled.
The first piece she ever played was Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” after hearing it on the radio.
“I apparently started picking out the notes; it was giddy-up from there,” Molloy said.
This week’s recitals of piano-violin concertos will be “a little more refined. That’s the plan anyhow,” she quipped.
The pair of performances come in counterpoint to the Port Angeles Symphony’s full-orchestra concerts. While those are grand affairs at the Port Angeles High School auditorium, Barston and Molloy offer something else.
“It’s a much more up-close and personal experience,” Molloy said, adding composers such as Mozart and Brahms created their chamber music for smaller settings: people’s homes and salons.
“This will be a real surprise treat for the audience,” Pasternack said.
He’s known Barston since encountering her at a St. Louis Symphony concert in 1998.
“She’s one of my favorite artists and people,” the conductor said.
“She has such a big heart,” he added, “and she’s my kind of musician: so expressive, so intelligent: really an Old World sensibility.”
Pasternack noted that Port Angeles Symphony season tickets are also available now. The 90th season includes nine more performances: full orchestra concerts on Nov. 5, Dec. 10, Feb. 18, March 25 and May 6, and chamber ensemble concerts at Holy Trinity in Port Angeles and Trinity United in Sequim on Jan. 20-21 and May 19-20. All performances feature guest artists.
The symphony includes players from Port Angeles, Port Townsend and Sequim, as well as from beyond Clallam and Jefferson counties.
For now, concert-goers are required to wear masks, Pasternack noted, to protect the most vulnerable people in attendance. The symphony will lift the mask requirement when the COVID-19 case rate falls below 100 per 100,000 population in a 14-day period.
Both recitals this week will have an intermission, Pasternack added.
“This is a wonderful opportunity,” he said, “for the community to come together to experience beautiful music.”
Barston, for her part, said she’s more than ready to return to Port Angeles, where she’s seen audiences revel in the immediacy of a live concert.
“You can feel it, as an artist. You get that very clear vibe. That’s why we do what we do.”
________
Diane Urbani de la Paz is a freelance writer and photographer living in Port Townsend.
Pianist Paige Roberts Molloy.
