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Kenai Peninsula Orchestra kicks off summer concert series

Shaylon Cochran/KDLL

 

The Kenai Peninsula Orchestra kicked off its annual summer concert series this week, ahead of its big gala performance later this month.

 

 

In the week-plus leading up to one of KPO’s biggest performances of the year, there is no shortage of good music across the Peninsula to keep music fans happy. Like the noon concert at the Kenai Fine Arts Center Thursday. What’s neat about these shorter gigs is the wide range of music you can hear, not just in a brief, 45 or so minute set, but the range you’ll hear from unlikely sources. The Habenera from the opera Carmen, performed by Trio con Brio, with Jane Parrish on bassoon, Mi’Shell French on flute, and KPO conductor Tammy Vollum-Matturro on clarinet, feels familiar and new all at the same time.

“With our instrumentation, flute, bassoon and clarinet, it puts a different dynamic on these pieces that were written in the 1700’s and so the arrangements are totally different than the classical piece that you can remember hearing. So, the bassoon is taking on multiple roles in that piece, playing the bass part and the cello part or the trombone part," Vollum-Matturro says.

The orchestra plays two concerts for its gala event, on Friday the 10th in Homer and the following evening in Kenai. Vollum-Matturro says this year will focus on music of the New World.

“We are celebrating the Americas this summer. For our gala concert, we’re going to celebrate Leonard Bernstein’s 100th birthday with the Overture to Candide. After that, we play Astor Piazzolla, Four Seasons of Buenas Aires. It's a piece written for strings and solo violin and it uses really cool sound effects and interesting rhythms throughout the piece. You will also hear hints of Vivaldi's Four Seasons in this piece, and we feature Dr. Oleg Proskurnya from the University of Alaska who will be joining us on the solo violin."

And that’s just the first half. After intermission, something a little different - a showing of Charlie Chaplin’s 1916 silent comedy The Rink.

“We will be playing ragtime music as the movie is being played, and (there’s) some really cool percussion effects that go along with the movie. That’s going to be loads of fun. And then we end with Marquez’s Danzon No. 2, which is a fabulous piece of music. It’s a great ender. My first year I conducted the summer festival we did this piece, so we’re bringing it back ten years later. When we did it ten years ago, it was super fun and we played it really well, but now it is a totally different piece of music. The orchestra is bigger, we have more string players...the rhythms are more intense. You cannot stand still on that piece.”

Find a list of KPO events happening across the Peninsula here.