“Repetition,” declared Brian Eno, “is a form of change.” Although
the famed conceptualist was referring to the static processes in his
pioneering ambient music, I think of Eno’s dictum whenever I go to
hear a community orchestra.
Like professional (i.e., salaried) bands such as the Seattle
Symphony, community orchestras play the warhorses we know and
love—symphonies by Beethoven and Tchaikovsky, Mozart concertos,
etc.—but with a wider range of results. Some local groups,
especially Orchestra Seattle, Seattle Philharmonic
Orchestra, and Philharmonia Northwest can, on a good night,
rival just about any orchestra anywhere. Others, like the Lake Union
Civic Orchestra (LUCO) and the Puget Sound Symphony
Orchestra (PSSO), usually sound scrappier, sometimes trading
in precision for a palpably exhilarating (or frustrating) feeling of
risk. At one LUCO concert a couple years ago, I wasn’t surprised when
a few bum notes in the Poco Allegretto of Brahms’s
Symphony No. 3 were quickly redeemed by a world-class horn
solo. If you want to hear classical music’s big hits sound fresh,
dangerous, and possibly transcendent, go hear a community
orchestra.
Community orchestras take bigger risks on new music, too, giving
local (and otherwise unknown) composers a chance. Nestled in an
upcoming PSSO performance (Sat May 16, Town Hall, 7:30 pm, $7 adv/$10
DOS, see www.psso.org for details)
of The Planets by Holst and Debussy’s Nocturnes is an
overture by the band’s own Kevin Tao, cheerily described on the
PSSO site as an “instrumentalist, composer, and poker
shark.”
Other community orchestras include the summertime Northwest
Mahler Festival Orchestra (check www.nwmahlerfestival.org for their
July 19 concert) as well as two outfits with concerts on June 7, the
Musicians Emeritus Symphony Orchestra (www.mesoseattle.org) and the Pontiac Bay
Symphony Orchestra (www.pontiacbay.org), which survey film scores (their June 7
concert includes music from Aliens, Psycho, and The
Abyss). Just outside of Seattle you can catch the Cascade
Symphony (www.cascadesymphony.org) or hear
the Rainier Symphony scale the summit of Mahler’s mammoth
Symphony No. 2 this weekend (see www.rainiersymphony.org for
details). Remarkably, the Burien-based Northwest Symphony
Orchestra (www.northwestsymphonyorchestra.org) program music by
local composers on just about every concert, from the Degenerate
Art Ensemble’s Joshua Kohl to the Seattle Symphony’s
composer-in-residence Samuel Jones.
Finally, fans of the avant face a tough choice Friday night: Chicago
composer Olivia Block (Fri May 15, Chapel Performance Space, 8
pm, $5–$15 sliding-scale donation) makes her first Seattle
appearance. That same night, percussionist Bonnie Whiting Smith (Fri May 15, Gallery 1412, 8 pm, $5–$15 sliding-scale donation)
performs compositions by Richard Johnson along with pieces by John
Cage, Daniel Alejandro Almada, Nicole DeLaittre, and “a quirky little
arrangement using Radiohead’s music and a traditional folk song.”
