PORT ANGELES — This isn’t your stereotypical fancy affair, even if it is at SunLand Country Club.

No, the Feb. 26 Applause! auction, with its Caribbean carnival theme, is like its beneficiary, the Port Angeles Symphony: A serious or snobby attitude just won’t fit in.

Take the president of the board of directors, Bob Coates, who will play a key role in the party.

“I’ll be there as the balloon man,” Coates promised.

He’ll be selling balloons attached to vouchers for restaurants in Sequim and Port Angeles; patrons purchase them to benefit the symphony while dispersal of the multicolored orbs makes the space increasingly festive.

Applause! has a new auctioneer this year: Seattle actor Matt Smith, whom symphony conductor Adam Stern, who lives in Seattle, discovered at an auction there.

Smith, after assessing the Port Angeles event, has urged the organizers to slim down the number of items in the live auction to emphasize quality over quantity.

Another change coming with the new auctioneer: The buyer’s service charges are also a thing of the past.

This time, Applause! patrons will have 33 items from which to choose instead of the 40 to 45 of past years.

Among the highlights are a two-hour helicopter tour, a week for two in New Orleans’ French Quarter and a trip for two to Oahu, Kauai or the Big Island of Hawaii.

Home-cooked gourmet dinners, including one with pianist Deborah Rambo Sinn providing a musical course of Beethoven, will also go up for bid.

Silent auction items

Then there are three tables loaded with silent auction items — totaling about 100 gift certificates and other goods from local merchants.

“Without their help, we would just fall flat,” Coates said of the businesses that give to Applause! every year.

Dinner is likewise lavish, with a choice of lingcod, roasted chicken, New York steak or the vegetarian option, prepared by chef Brian Lippert.

A quartet from Port Angeles High School will supply an undercurrent of music, and “we start the evening with sparkling wine,” added symphony board member Chuck Whitney.

“It’s a lot of fun” from start to finish, he said.

Fun, yes, but also “terribly important,” in the words of Mark Wendeborn, executive director of the Port Angeles Symphony Orchestra.

Applause! supplies about 14 percent of the symphony’s $250,000 annual operating budget, he noted. Only 40 percent of the symphony budget comes from ticket sales to the 13 concerts that compose each season.

It’s rare for a community the size of Port Angeles to have an orchestra of this caliber — and to sustain it, Wendeborn said, adding that this is the symphony’s 79th season.

Its 80 musicians range from teenagers to octogenarians, he said, and together, they reflect the community’s love of live music.

‘Entrusted’ by founders

“We’ve been entrusted by [the founders] 80 years ago to keep this orchestra going for future generations,” Wendeborn said.

Yet Coates added that fundraising grows more difficult each year. Port Angeles now has numerous arts organizations, and many hold fundraising auctions.

With Applause!, he said, the symphony started the trend toward such events a few decades ago.

One more aspect Coates wants to emphasize: the Applause! “dessert dash,” which he said has an improved format this year:

The guests at each table will be able to pool their money in a kitty, and whichever table accumulates the highest amount will have first choice of the high-end desserts donated by board members.

“They are really luscious,” Coates promised.

All of this activity is, of course, in the name of bringing live music, from Handel and Mozart to Copland and Bernstein, to the people of Clallam County.

And even as budget stresses continue, Wendeborn is upbeat.

Running this symphony “is absolutely the best job you could have in the world,” he said.

Tickets to Applause! are $75 including dinner, wine, entertainment and bidding in the live and silent auctions.

Doors open at 6 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 26, at the SunLand Golf & Country Club, 109 Hilltop Drive, Sequim. Information awaits at 360-457-5579 and www.PortAngelesSymphony.org.

Seating is limited, and patrons are urged to make reservations this week.

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Features Editor Diane Urbani de la Paz can be reached at 360-417-3550 or at diane.urbani@peninsuladailynews.com.