“Today” and “tonight” signify Friday, June 19.
SEQUIM — In the last concert of the season, the Sequim Community Orchestra will offer joy, drama and the energy of youth — all free.
The 48-piece orchestra, whose members range from preteens to septuagenarians, will take the stage with director Phil Morgan-Ellis at Trinity United Methodist Church, 100 S. Blake Ave., at 7 this evening.
The program samples the music of Georges Bizet; Tchaikovsky; Schubert’s Unfinished Symphony and Beethoven’s Third Symphony, the “Eroica.” And for good measure, the evening features the suite from that beloved British television drama, “Downton Abbey.”
The Sequim Community Orchestra environment is one where musicians across the generations can come together as equals, Morgan-Ellis says.
“Everyone has something to contribute, and everyone has something to learn,” from 10-year-old cellist Kara Heisler to her mother Nicole, who plays the French horn.
Ethan Heisler, 12, is here too, playing violin beside his sister and their mom.
Another parent-daughter team is Madison Orth, 13, a violinist, and her mother Katie Orth, a bassoon player with both the Sequim and Port Angeles Symphony orchestras.
The concertmistress for tonight’s performance, Jasmine Gauthun, has been playing violin for 12 years; she began when she was not quite 4.
She’s also a member of the Port Angeles Symphony.
Nicole Heisler picked up the French horn back when she was a fifth-grader in Denver.
Her father, a band director, encouraged her then, but in recent years she’s been busy homeschooling her two kids.
When they joined the Sequim orchestra, she had a little bit of free time — so she took up her instrument again.
“It came back quicker than I thought it would,” Heisler, who lives in Port Angeles, said.
As a registered nonprofit, the orchestra has a board of directors, led until recently by cofounder Lilias Green.
Now board member Beth Pratt is stepping up to the president’s chair, while Green will serve as secretary, flutist Randa Wintermute is the new vice president and Aldryth O’Hara, also a flutist, will continue as treasurer.
Pratt, for her part, hopes to bring in funding for the orchestra’s strings program for children, offered at Sequim’s Greywolf Elementary School, and grow the whole organization’s membership.
Having a community orchestra — a training ground as well as a source of free, live, classical music — “what a gift,” she writes on the website.
For much more information about the orchestra and the youth strings program, see www.sequimcommunityorchestra.org or phone 360-681-5469.