2026/27 Season
EMBRACE
Some music feels like a hand reaching back.
Sunday, February 7, 2027, 3:00 p.m.
Washington Center for the Performing Arts
● Concert Overview
What You’ll Hear
EMBRACE turns Kaleidoscope toward the people beside us: the partners, friends, mentors, and quiet companions who change the way we hear the world. This is a concert about friendship, conversation, memory, and the communities that help us become ourselves.
Peggy Glanville-Hicks’ Sinfonia Pacifica opens the program with a vibrant sound world shaped by travel and imagination. Though the title points toward the Pacific, the music also reflects the composer’s interest in sounds and colors she was exploring for an opera set in India. The result is a bright, unexpected opening work by one of Australia’s distinctive 20th-century musical voices.
At the heart of the concert, Seattle Symphony musicians Helen Kim and Katie Liu join Olympia Symphony for Mozart’s Sinfonia Concertante for violin and viola. The piece gives both soloists equal voice, not as rivals, but as partners. One phrase reaches out. Another answers. The violin and viola move together, apart, and together again, creating music that feels like trust.
Elgar’s Enigma Variations closes the concert with one of the great musical love letters to community. Before Enigma, Elgar was searching for the sound that would define him. The breakthrough came when he turned toward the people closest to him. Encouraged by his wife Alice, Elgar wrote a set of variations inspired by friends, private jokes, personal memories, and the relationships that shaped his life. The mystery of the hidden “enigma” remains unsolved, but the heart of the piece is clear: Elgar found his voice by listening to his own community.
From the tenderness of “Nimrod” to the sweep of the finale, Enigma Variations reminds us that no artist creates alone. EMBRACE is a concert about the people we carry with us, and the music that carries them forward.
Program
Peggy GLANVILLE-HICKS: Sinfonia Pacifica
Wolfgang Amadeus MOZART: Sinfonia Concertante for Violin, Viola and Orchestra in E-Flat Major, K. 364
Edward ELGAR: Enigma Variations, Op. 36
Artists
Alexandra Arrieche, conductor
Helen Kim, violin
Katie Liu, viola
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.
