Accordion social set for May 21
The Sequim Accordion Social is scheduled for 1:30-4 p.m. Sunday, May 21, at the Shipley Center,921 E. Hammond St.
All accordionists are invited to play a selection or two. Accordion lovers and dancers are welcome as well. The featured player is Gig Harbor’s Charlie Brown.
A suggested $5 donation is requested to cover room rental.
Cellist returns for Symphony concert Saturday
The Port Angeles Symphony’s last full-orchestra concert of its 90th anniversary season will feature a soloist well-known to local music lovers.
Cellist Julian Schwarz, who was an 18-year-old from Seattle when he first performed with the Port Angeles Symphony, is the featured artist on Saturday, May 6.
He will join the 60-member orchestra at 7:30 p.m. in the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center, 304 E. Park Ave. Conductor and music director Jonathan Pasternack will give a brief pre-concert chat at 6:30 p.m. The public is also invited to the Symphony’s dress rehearsal at 10 a.m. Saturday, also at the Performing Arts Center.
For tickets and information, see portangelessymphony.org or contact the Symphony office at 360-457-5579 or pasymphony@olypen.com. Port Book and News in Port Angeles also is a ticket outlet.
The cellist, now 32, will perform Dvorak’s Concerto for “Violoncello”; Schwarz and the Port Angeles Symphony played this concerto together several years ago and received a enormously enthusiastic response, Pasternack said. The Saturday concert program also promises Mozart’s Symphony No. 32 in G major and Bartok’s Concerto for Orchestra.
Musicians come from across the region to perform in the Port Angeles Symphony. Its Sequim residents include oboist and horn player Nancy Reis, who will be featured in the May 6 concert; flutist and piccolo player Marie Meyers; violinist Kate Southard-Dean, and violist Tyrone T. Beatty.
The Port Angeles Symphony’s Chamber Orchestra will give two more concerts later this month: on May 19 at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church in Port Angeles and on May 20 at Trinity United Methodist Church in Sequim.
Local groups get arts funding
Six Clallam County organizations were selected to receive grant funding through the Community Accelerator program funded by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation and administered by ArtsFund.
Organizations include Olympic Theater Arts, Sequim City Band, Port Angeles Fine Arts Center, the Port Angeles Community Players, Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts, and Field Arts & Events Hall, among the 671 organizations across Washington state to receive the funding.
The Community Accelerator grant program was launched in October 2022 in response to continuing declines in arts and culture support following the COVID-19 pandemic and to boost arts organizations’ ability to invest in their missions and essential roles serving communities across the state. Clallam County organizations received $81,900 in total funding as a part of the $10 million that was awarded statewide.
Program support prioritized funding to communities that are underrepresented in major funding programs including rural areas, BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and people with disabilities.
Together We Read: ‘Tastes Like War’
North Olympic Library System (NOLS) patrons can join readers throughout U.S. and across the globe enjoying the newest Together We Read digital book club selection. From May 3-17, book lovers can access an eBook or eAudiobook of the spellbinding psychological thriller, “Tastes Like War,” with no wait lists or holds.
Visit anytime.overdrive.com or download the Libby app to borrow the book by Grace M. Cho. Join an online discussion about the book at togetherweread.com/us. The free program only requires a NOLS library card to get started.
Part food memoir, part sociological investigation, “Tastes Like War” is a hybrid text about a daughter’s search through intimate and global history for the roots of her mother’s schizophrenia.
Grace M. Cho grew up as the daughter of a white American merchant marine and the Korean bar hostess he met abroad. They were one of few immigrants in a xenophobic small town dur
ing the Cold War, where identity was politicized by everyday details — language, cultural references, memories, and food. When Grace was 15, her dynamic mother experienced the onset of schizophrenia, a condition that would continue and evolve for the rest of her life.
In her mother’s final years, Grace learned to cook dishes from her parent’s childhood in order to invite the past into the present, and to hold space for her mother’s multiple voices at the table. And through careful listening over these shared meals, Grace discovered not only the things that broke the brilliant, complicated woman who raised her—but also the things that kept her alive.
For more information or assistance to get started, visit nols.org/together, call 360-417-8500 or email to discover@nols.org.
Call for youth art
The Juan de Fuca Foundation for the Arts is seeking art submittals from artists between ages 11-25 for its 30th-annual Festival Community Art Gallery.
Submission deadline is May 15.
Artwork must be able to hang on a wall and can be any medium or level. Photography, fiber art and poetry are encouraged, alongside traditional 2-D mediums (as long as they can be hung on a wall).
Submissions must be accompanied by name, age, medium, contact information, title of work (if applicable), requested price for purchase (if applicable).
The gallery display is set for Friday-Sunday, May 26-28, in the atrium at Vern Burton Community Center, 308 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles.
Submit a copy along with artist information online at forms.gle/nuN2qd4Pjg4jZZhq5.
Photo courtesy of Julian Schwarz Cellist Julian Schwarz is the featured artist at the Port Angeles Symphony’s last full-orchestra concert of its 90th anniversary season, set for May 6 in the Port Angeles High School Performing Arts Center.
