In his debut as the new conductor of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra, Jonathan Pasternack, originally of Brooklyn, N.Y., will preside over 155 local musicians tonight.
“It’s a jump-start to the season,” Pasternack said of the two Pops & Picnic concerts that were set this weekend: on Friday at the Sequim Boys & Girls Club gym and then tonight at the Vern Burton Community Center in Port Angeles.
Tickets were going fast this week for both, according to Mark Wendeborn, executive director of the 83-year-old Port Angeles Symphony. Just a few dozen were available at Sequim and Port Angeles outlets by Wednesday afternoon.
Pasternack, who recently moved into a cottage above Sequim Bay, will captain the 62-player orchestra through a packed program.
A cross-section: Handel’s Water Music Suite, “Sea Songs” from Ralph Vaughan Williams, Strauss’ “By the Beautiful Blue Danube,” Horner’s “Titanic” medley, Sousa’s “Hands Across the Sea” and Coates’ “Dambusters March.”
Guest soloist Jamie Balducci will sing “The Star-Spangled Banner” at the outset. Ninety-one teenagers in the Sequim and Port Angeles High School choirs, directed by John Lorentzen and Jolene Dalton Gailey respectively, will end the concert with “America the Beautiful.”
“That should bring the house down,” said a delighted Pasternack.
The conductor, who has led orchestras from Seattle to Montreal to Barcelona, Spain, was chosen in May from eight candidates, each of whom came to audition in Port Angeles.
He relocated to the Peninsula after traveling in Europe this summer, where he said it was exceedingly hot.
Heat waves aren’t a problem here, Pasternack is pleased to learn, though he has found warmth from the orchestral musicians.
“Everybody seems motivated to work hard and play hard,” he said after Monday night’s rehearsal.
Taking the orchestra through the “Moldau,” Bedrich Smetana’s 136-year-old symphonic poem, Pasternack looked lifted by the music, his shoulders swaying with the sound of the strings and flute.
The maestro stopped the players again and again, instructing them to stay together as they traveled through the piece.
“Remember: one river, flowing,” he said.
At 46, Pasternack has prodigious experience not only as a conductor but also as a teacher.
He’s served as guest faculty at colleges including Ithaca, Pacific Lutheran University, Sam Houston State University, Central Washington University, the Conservatoire de Maurepas in France and the Conservatoire Superieur de Musique de Genève in Switzerland.
Growing up in Brooklyn — a hometown he shares with George Gershwin, Barbra Streisand and Mel Brooks — Pasternack played trombone, violin, piano, percussion and cello.
At 16, he won a trombone scholarship to the Manhattan School of Music. He later transferred to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he studied astronomy, philosophy and political science.
Pasternack was 18 and a student there when he made his conducting debut with the MIT Chamber Orchestra, a group he founded.
Pasternack also holds graduate degrees from the University of Washington, where he was later director of orchestral activities at the UW School of Music from 2010-13.
It was during that period that he also released a CD on which he conducts the London Symphony Orchestra in Bartok’s Miraculous Mandarin suite and Brahms’ Symphony No. 1.
At this point in his life, this is exactly where Pasternack wishes to be.
“It’s very exciting for me,” the conductor said when he was hired to lead the Port Angeles Symphony, whose members range from teens to octogenarians.
“I was struck by the enthusiasm and the level of talent in the community,” Pasternack added.
“Where classical music is going to come alive is in the community orchestras and youth orchestras.”
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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5062, or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.
