CHIMACUM — Guest conductor Gil Seeley will lead the Port Townsend Community Orchestra for a Sunday concert titled “Mozart and More” in the Chimacum High School auditorium.
Admission will be free to the 2 p.m. concert but donations will be welcome at the auditorium at 91 West Valley Road.
Wolfgang Mozart’s “Solemn Vespers” forms the core of the concert and brings repeat engagements from soprano Cynthia Webster, alto Vicki Helwick, tenor Robin Reed and bass Ray Chirayeth.
The Peninsula Singers will join the orchestra for Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana.”
Other musicians
Rounding out the concert are the Oboe Concerto in D minor by Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello and “An Outdoor Overture” by Aaron Copland.
Reed brought the house down when he performed with the orchestra last October, organizers said. His career has spanned decades as lead performer for the Stadt Theater, Bremerhaven Opera Company in Germany, Arizona Opera, Virginia Opera and Los Angeles Opera Company.
Webster and Chirayeth last sang with the Port Townsend orchestra in December 2015.
Webster was the featured soloist for the Detroit Concert Choir and led award-winning performances with them in Wales, Austria and Spain.
Chirayeth has been the leading actor for the musicals “Cats,” “Starlight Express” and “Joseph and the Technicolor Dreamcoat” in his native India. He has also performed with the Bangalore Academy Chorale and the Moscow (Russia) Oratorio.
Helwick last appeared as singer and narrator with the Port Townsend orchestra in April 2015. She has a bachelor’s degree in voice performance from California State University, Sacramento.
Principal oboist Anne Krabill also serves as principal oboist for the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra and the Port Angeles Chamber Orchestra.
In addition, she has performed as principal oboe with the Northwest Symphony in Seattle, the Bainbridge Symphony, the Peninsula Dance Theater in Bremerton and the Sooke Philharmonic in British Columbia. She has been a guest performer with the 82nd Airborne Division Band in North Carolina.
Guest conductor
Guest conductor Seeley studied at Oberlin Conservatory of Music and went on to earn his master’s degree and doctorate in music from the University of Southern California. He was instructor and assistant professor at USC-Santa Cruz, director at Oregon Repertory Singers and, for 35 years, a professor and director at Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Ore.
Last spring, he was a guest conductor for the Rainshadow Chorale. He received the Aaron Copland Award for performing American music in 2002 and the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award in 2007.
Seeley is a finalist in the orchestra’s search for a new music director.
He will present a preconcert talk at 1:15 p.m.
“Solemn Vespers” was Mozart’s last completed religious work and foreshadowed his unfinished Great Mass in C minor and his Requiem.
These were some of his last works composed in Salzburg before moving to Vienna.
The concert will open with Marcello’s Oboe Concerto in D minor.
This is Marcello’s best known work and its middle, adagio, movement is a staple of wedding music collections.
“Frostiana” is the homage of one New Englander to another.
In this work, Randall Thompson sets seven of Robert Frost’s poems to music, including “The road not taken,” “Choose something like a star” and “Stopping by the woods on a snowy evening.”
“Solemn Vespers” was Mozart’s last completed religious work and it foreshadowed his unfinished Great Mass in C Minor and his “Requiem.”
These were some of his last works composed in Salzburg before moving to Vienna.
Copland’s “An Outdoor Overture” will round out the program.
This is a work in the period when Copland was moving to simplify his music and incorporate folk tunes.
Conductor Alexander Richter requested this from Copland as part of a program, “American Music for American Youth.”
The Port Townsend Community Orchestra’s 2016-17 season is dedicated to the memory of Dewey Ehling, beloved conductor and artistic director for more than two decades.
Ehling, an icon of the North Olympic Peninsula music community, died last summer after an extended illness.
