2026/27 Season
DREAM
Some dreams are wild. Some are luminous. Some sound like home.
Sunday, April 18, 2027, 3:00 p.m.
Washington Center for the Performing Arts
● Concert Overview
What You’ll Hear
DREAM closes Olympia Symphony’s 2026/27 season, Kaleidoscope, with a celebration of the Americas: not as one place, one story, or one sound, but as a vast meeting of landscapes, cultures, memories, and hope.
The season began with LIFT, a concert that asked what American music sounds like when many voices rise together. DREAM brings that question full circle, widening the lens from America as a nation to America as a continent.
The concert opens with Jimmy López’s América Salvaje, a symphonic poem inspired by Blasón by Peruvian poet José Santos Chocano. The poem celebrates Peru through its Indigenous and Hispanic inheritances, then opens outward into a larger vision of land, ancestry, pride, and identity. López transforms that spirit into orchestral sound: bold, cinematic, and alive with the feeling of a land singing itself into being.
At the center of the program, Olympia Symphony’s own Principal Flute Mary Jensen steps into the spotlight for Kevin Puts’ Flute Concerto. Written by the Pulitzer Prize-winning composer, the concerto grows from a simple musical idea into something lyrical, searching, and deeply human. Just as Habibi enters into conversation with Beethoven in CONNECT, Puts enters into conversation with Mozart in his Flute Concerto, especially in a second movement inspired by the floating world of Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 21. It is music about influence, memory, and finding your own voice inside something beloved.
Then comes Dvořák’s Symphony No. 9, “From the New World,” the heart of the concert and the final destination of the season. Written while Dvořák was living in America, the symphony became one of the most beloved musical visions of the idea of a new world filled with longing, possibility, and hope. Its famous Largo, with the English horn melody many listeners know by heart, seems to suspend time. Its final movement brings the full orchestra into a sweeping statement of arrival.
DREAM closes Kaleidoscope by bringing its many colors into one final vision: wild, luminous, searching, and full of possibility.
Program
Jimmy LÓPEZ: América Salvaje
Kevin PUTS: Flute Concerto
Antonín DVOŘÁK: Symphony No. 9, “From the New World”
Artists
Alexandra Arrieche, conductor
Mary Jensen, flute
Plan Your Visit
Frequently Asked Questions
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A typical concert runs about two hours, with one intermission. Program details are available above so you can read about the music in advance.
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Doors open 60 minutes before curtain. Come early: grab concessions in the lobby, read the program, and find your seat.
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Whatever you’d wear out to dinner in Olympia. You’ll see suits and you’ll see jeans. Come as you are, comfortable enough to sit and listen for two hours.
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Sit closer than you think you need to. Watch the players, not just the conductor. Then stay for a post-concert conversation with Alexandra and our guest artists.
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Nothing is required of you. Clap when everyone else does, or don't worry about it. There's no dress code and no wrong way to listen. Just be in the room.
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The Washington Center is on Washington Street downtown. City lots and street parking are free on Sundays. Give yourself fifteen minutes to park and walk, and plan a meal nearby before or after the concert.
At the Capital High School Performing Arts Center, plenty of free parking is available in the parking lots surrounding the venue.
Groups with accessible needs are welcome to flip on their hazard lights and drop guests off outside the venue doors before parking. -
Yes. Children are welcome at our concerts, and you'll see them in the hall. Bring a child who can sit through a movie, and pick a seat near the aisle.
