CHIMACUM — In the old pictures, the composers look mighty severe. Yet their music is something else: It’s all about exuberance, frolic and floating on air.
This is dance music, to be celebrated in a concert by the 50-piece Port Townsend Community Orchestra this Sunday in the Chimacum High School auditorium, 91 West Valley Road.
As ever, admission is free to the 2 p.m. performance, the last one before the orchestra’s spring-summer break.
Also as traditional, maestro Dewey Ehling will give a pre-concert talk about the music at 1:15 p.m.
“We will top off the season,” Ehling writes in his conductor’s notes, “with the sparkle of the dance,” from the prelude and mazurka from Leo Delibes’ “Coppelia” to Richard Hayman’s “Pops Hoedown.”
Edvard Grieg’s Norwegian Dances, Enrique Granados’ Danzas Españolas (Spanish Dances), Dvorak’s Slavonic Dance No. 8 and the Adagio from Aram Khachaturian’s “Spartacus” ballet are also on the itinerary.
With these pieces, Ehling will lead the orchestra around the globe with a little help from a friend.
Co-conductor Hollie Kaufman will lead the Grieg and the Granados.
Most demanding art
“I have always thought of dance as the most demanding of all the arts,” Ehling writes.
“It has all the glamor of opera and the demands of rhythmic accuracy, which all instrumentalists face, but also the physical demands of an athlete.”
The maestro has long played for the dancers, ballet and otherwise. He looks at these fellow performers with admiration — and maybe a bit of wistfulness.
“I earned my way through college playing in a dance band, so I never really learned to dance. Later, when others were dancing the waltz and other forms, I was playing in the orchestra,” he writes.
“Maybe that’s why I love the dance so much today, and why I’ve planned this program.”
To find out more about Sunday’s concert and about the maestro and musicians, visit www.PortTownsendOrchestra.org.
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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.