Redoubt Chamber Orchestra to play varied concert

Audiences at Redoubt Chamber Orchestra’s Evening of Classics concert — 7 p.m Friday at Soldotna’s Christ Lutheran Church — will hear a little of the familiar and a bit of the new.

The familiar includes songs that might be known from other places: Paul Dukas’ “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” (popularized by Disney’s Fantasia sequence starring Mickey Mouse) and Jay Ungar’s melancholy 1982 violin feature “Ashokan Farewell,” used prominently in Ken Burns’ Civil War documentaries.

The unfamiliar includes the dramatic “Movement for Orchestra,” written by Czech-American composer Vaclav Nelhybel in 1967.

ADVERTISEMENT
0 seconds of 0 secondsVolume 0%
Press shift question mark to access a list of keyboard shortcuts
00:00
00:00
00:00
 

“I like to have something the audience knows,” Vollom-Matturro said. “I program something comfortable, and people can relate to it and know it. And then sometimes I try to do things that might be new to them. They will not know this Nelhybel piece for orchestra. So you can grab your audience, and then give them something different.”

The concert will conclude with John Phillips Sousa’s “Washington Post March,” lead by a guest conductor. After the concert’s second-to-last piece, Vollom-Matturro will auction off her baton, and the winner will take the conductor’s stand to lead the march. Not that the players will actually be marching.

Vollom-Matturro said it’s a challenge for an orchestra to play a march — less for the wind players than the strings, who aren’t in the original composition.

“But the fact that we have done this over the years for several years makes it easier for the musicians now to play the march because they get the feel for it,” Vollom-Matturro said. “But you don’t normally play marches with strings and an orchestra.”

Between the full orchestra pieces, members of the orchestra will do solo and ensemble pieces they’ve chosen themselves. These also cover a wide swathe of musical territory.

“I’m playing a waltz trio with a bassoon player and a flute player, and I play clarinet,” Vollom-Matturro said. “There’s a Beethoven trio. Simon Nissen is singing a Sondheim piece. There’s some Chopin. We have some Russian music with violin, flute, and piano. We have a brass trio by Poulenc. We have a Rachmaninoff piano duet. We have a Dvoràk violin solo. We have a trombone duet… A Reinecke trio for french horn, clarinet, and piano. We’re hitting some big-time composers here, and we’ve got French, Russian, Aremenian, everything.”

As for herself, Vollom-Matturro said she “tends to gravitate to the Russian composers.”

“Prokofiev, Mussorgsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Rachmaninoff, Shostakovich — that music just grabs me,” Vollom-Matturro said. “So I tend to program them often. It’s just great music.”

Aside from the solo and ensemble pieces, Friday’s concert includes one Russian composer getting the full-orchestra treatment: Modest Mussorgsky, represented on the program by his 1958 “Scherzo in B Flat Major.”

Other performances are in store for local listeners. Another group Vollom-Matturo leads, the Kenai Peninsula Orchestra, will play a pops concert at the end of the month featuring music by film composer John Williams, famous for scores to movies including Star Wars, Jaws, and Jurassic Park.

Reach Ben Boettger at ben.boettger@peninsulaclarion.com

More in Life

This sweet and tangy roasted spaghetti squash dish includes blended tomato and goat cheese sauce. (Photo by Tressa Dale/Peninsula Clarion)
A list for life’s challenges

Roasted spaghetti squash is blended with tomato and goat cheese sauce for a sweet and tangy meal.

Carey Restino of Homer Hilltop Farm rearranges flowers at her booth during the first market of 2025 on Saturday, May 24. (Chloe Pleznac/Homer News)
Farmers Market kicks off season

The local market has been operating seasonally since 2000.

This excerpt from a 1916 U.S. Department of Agriculture map shows Kachemak Bay and vicinity less than 20 years after the arrival of the Kings County Mining Company.
Mary Penney and her 1898 Alaska adventure — Part 7

The Kings County Mining Company had hiked through the mountain benchlands at the advent of winter, hoping to reach the gold-mining areas of Hope and Sunrise.

Nick Varney
Unhinged Alaska: It seems like a lifetime ago

A reader asked me if I remembered writing about a trip Jane and I took to New Zealand many years ago.

File
Minister’s Message: Live like this

“Living” is about have a spiritual life based on the belief in Jesus and accepting his forgiveness.

Boats gather offshore the Homer Spit in honor of the 2025 Blessing of the Fleet on Tuesday, May 20 at the Seafarer’s Memorial on the Homer Spit. (Chloe Pleznac/Homer News)
‘Blessing of the Fleet’ remembers, honors sacrifices of local mariners

Community members quietly gathered in somber reflection of lives lost to the sea over the past year.

tease
‘Share our gifts with the world’

Local artist creates vibrant body of work and renews her artistic journey.

Author Ruth Ozeki gives her keynote presentation at the 23rd annual Kachemak Bay Writers Conference on Saturday, May 17, 2025, at Kachemak Bay Campus in Homer, Alaska. (Delcenia Cosman/Homer News)
Literary citizenship and communities of one

Author Ruth Ozeki was the keynote presenter for the 23rd annual Kachemak Bay Writer’s Conference last weekend.

File
Minster’s Message: The high value of faithfulness

The quality of faithfulness in your life to God and Christian teachings has a quiet, steady reward that sooner or later.

Most Read