2025-2026 | Concert Season 34
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“Sublime Simplicity and Peacefulness: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto”
2025-2026 Concert OneSunday, October 26, 2025 | 3PM
Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church
22818 SE 8th Street, Sammamish, WA 98074Often referred to as the most beautiful of Mozart's final works, his Clarinet Concerto remains the finest ever written for the instrument. The Sammamish Symphony's principal clarinet Reis McCullough brings his sensitive artistry to the solo role. The program opens with a unique symphony for wind band by the early French Romantic composer François-Joseph Gossec, and also includes Mozart's ballet music from the opera Idomeneo and a haunting orchestral pastorale by British composer Gerald Finzi.
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Holidays in Sammamish
2025-2026 Concert TwoSunday, December 7, 2025 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterThe orchestra celebrates the holidays in its traditionally untraditional way, with beloved holiday songs and carols, some lesser-known music of the season, and a surprise or two.
Program to be announced.
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Beethoven & Schubert
2025-2026 Concert ThreeSunday, February 22, 2026 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterAlthough they never met, Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert were a mutual admiration society. After seeing some of Schubert's scores, Beethoven remarked that the younger composer had "the divine spark of genius"; Schubert revered Beethoven above all other composers and, too shy to ever request an in-person meeting, asked at the end of his tragically short life to be buried as close to Beethoven as possible. This concert gives audiences the opportunity to savor these two geniuses' music back-to-back. Soprano Stacey Mastrian is the engaging and dramatic soloist for Beethoven's concert aria Ah, perfido! (Ah, faithless one!) and Schubert's lyrical Der Hirt auf dem Felsen (The Shepherd on the Rock).
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Stage and Screen
2025-2026 Concert FourSunday, April 26, 2026 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterA program featuring music from the worlds of theater, opera, and film. Henry Purcell was a prolific composer of incidental music for stage productions, and we present his music to The Married Beau as arranged for modern orchestra by Gustav Holst. From Rossini's William Tell, the orchestra will play the delectable balet music from the opera's third act. Aaron Copland, who wrote several of the 20th century's finest film scores, compiled the suite Music for Movies containing excerpts from The City, Of Mice and Men, and Our Town. The orchestra's esteemed principal keyboardist, Kiwa Mizutani, is the spirited soloist for Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 22, a work imbued with the composer's characteristic theatrical genius.
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"A Happy, Blissful Song":
The Blue Danube
2025-2026 Concert FiveSunday, June 7, 2026 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterThe immortal works of Johann Strauss, Jr. — a.k.a. "The Waltz King" — have beguiled, charmed, and seduced the music-loving public from their premieres to the present day. The Sammamish Symphony closes the season with a bouquet of his compositions: the waltzes Morgenblätter (Morning Papers) and The Blue Danube, as well as his witty Künstler Quadrille (Artists Quadrille), a witty mash-up of other composers' greatest hits. Pianist Geísa Dutra performs Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 1 with grace and verve, and the concert opens with an opera overture by one of Johann Sebastian Bach's most talented sons, Johann Christian Bach.
Concerts from Prior Seasons
2024-2025 | Concert Season 33
2023-2024 | Concert Season 32
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A Sammamish Family Concert
Saturday, October 21, 2023
2:00PM
Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church -
Holidays in Sammamish
Sunday, December 3, 2023
2:00PM
Eastlake Performing Arts Center -
Humor: Mankind's Greatest Gift
2023-2024 Season Concert Three
Sunday, February 25, 2024
2:00PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterThe Sammamish Symphony takes a delightful look at musical humor as exemplified by some major creative figures.
Joseph Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony (No. 94) is a longtime audience favorite due to its famous rude awakening to those who nodded off during his slow movements.
Gioachino Rossini, whose operatic output contains some of the medium's funniest scores and librettos, is represented by the overture to Il Signor Bruschino, which contains some unexpected percussive effects from the orchestra's string section.
Peter Schickele, the mastermind behind the works of P. D. Q. Bach, is the party responsible for Quodlibet, a mélange of themes gleefully stolen from everything from Beethoven symphonies to "Tea for Two."
Our special guest artist, soprano Stacey Mastrian, will present a bouquet of humorous songs spanning several centuries, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure.
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Unique Sounds
2023-2024 Season Concert Four
Sunday, April 28, 2024
2:00PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterIn a distinct departure from the usual sounds of a symphony concert, the Sammamish Symphony presents four composers whose quests for new sonorities led them down unique and appealing paths.
Darius Milhaud was the first European composer to compose a masterpiece, The Creation of the World, blending classical forms with American jazz. Heinrich von Biber's Battalia is an unbelievably forward-looking work from 1673 which uses a variety of surprising techniques to describe a group of soldiers preparing for battle.
Giovanni Gabrieli's fascinating and opulent Renaissance works for multiple brass choirs still speak to audiences centuries later. Our guest soloist Jack Reed will afford a rare opportunity to hear a solo percussionist: Emmanuel Séjourné's Concerto for Marimba and Orchestra
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"This Blessed Plot, This Earth, This Realm, This England"
2023-2024 Season Concert Five
Sunday, June 9, 2024
2:00PM
Eastlake Performing Arts CenterMusic Director Adam Stern, self-described as "an unashamed Anglophile", has programmed a season finale indulging his great love for English music.
The rollicking overture to Aristophanes' The Wasps by Ralph Vaughan Williams will cap a program that includes music by Vaughan Williams' best friend Gustav Holst (of Planets fame), the Impressionist Frederick Delius, the composer-pianist John McCabe (represented here by music from his opera based on C. S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe), and the budding talent George Butterworth, whose career was tragically cut short when he perished in the final days of World War I.
These diverse voices will paint a picture of England in all its powerful and poetic glory.
2022-2023 Concert Season 31
In a program of considerable variety, the Sammamish Symphony opens its 2022-23 season with music from three different centuries and five different countries. Joseph Haydn's Overture to an English Opera kicks off a concert combining music for the stage, the screen, and the concert-hall. Guitarist Michael Partington is the soloist in Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco's Guitar Concerto No. 1, a work written for the legendary Andrés Segovia. We also celebrate the 150th anniversary of the great English composer Ralph Vaughan Williams with a performance of his Two Hymn-Tune Preludes. Rarities by Morton Gould and Emil Hartmann round out this gala season opener.
The Sammamish Symphony continues its tradition of festive holiday programs with a blend of music for the season, beloved classical bonbons, and some jolly surprises. Come and celebrate the joys of the season by giving yourself the gift of live music!
IEver since its 1928 premiere, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera has been one of the most oft-performed works of 20th century musical theater. We present an instrumental suite from this timeless masterpiece, which includes its most famous song, Mack the Knife. The concert is rounded out by music of the Italian Baroque (Locatelli), the early Romantic period (Schubert), and the music of old Vienna (Josef Strauss). The concert concludes with two effervescent and lighthearted suites by Igor Stravinsky.
The first of the Three B's, and a perpetual nominee for Greatest Composer of All Time, Johann Sebastian Bach continues to inspire musicians and audiences with the power, the beauty, and the sheer technical brilliance of his music. Join us as we present a wide-ranging concert of Bach's works in several forms. The Sammamish Symphony's principal flute, Melissa Underhill, will be featured in a performance of Bach's Sonata in E minor in a new transcription for flute and orchestra.
The Sammamish Symphony ends its 2022-23 season with a program comprised of works by the three greatest composers of the Classical period. Mozart's overture to his early opera Lucio Silla, essentially a mini-symphony, provides the introduction to Beethoven's vivacious Piano Concerto No. 2 with guest soloist Laure Struber. The concert concludes with one of Haydn's magnificent late symphonies, No. 90 in C Major.