It’s a great weekend to take in the arts, from a concerto to postcard-sized visuals
Music’s missing ‘Women’
Self-described “recovering pianist” Sarah Hagen blends humor and history with music by mostly forgotten female composers in “Wonder Women,” on stage Saturday, Feb. 3, in Olympia. Hagen’s work has been described as “sit-down comedy,” since she’s at the piano, sometimes telling stories, sometimes playing. Hagen will introduce audiences to music by 18th- and 19th-century composers, including Marianna Martines, who often joined Mozart in piano duets at the musical soirées she and her sister held in their Viennese home, and Cécile Chaminade, the first woman to make her living as a composer. (Check out both Hagen and Chaminade’s music in a 2022 video.) “Wonder Women” will be on stage at 3 p.m. and 7:30 p.m. Saturday in the Black Box at The Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE, Olympia. Tickets are $36-$46.
Symphony celebrates ‘Fantastique’
The Olympia Symphony Orchestra’s “Fantastique,” set for Sunday, Feb. 4, takes its name from Hector Berlioz’s 1830 “Symphonie Fantastique” — a piece that Leonard Bernstein called the first musical expedition into psychedelia. Also on the program is the West Coast premiere of Jacob Bancks’ Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, described by the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Peter Dobrin as “an amiable work — frisky, colorful, voluble.” The soloist for the piece, whose three parts are titled “Unruly,” “Tender” and “Defiant,” is The Philadelphia Orchestra’s Ricardo Morales, for whom the piece was written. The music begins at 3 p.m. at the Washington Center for the Performing Arts, 512 Washington St. SE. Tickets are $17.25-$84.75.
‘Creature’ closing
South Puget Sound Community College’s 2024 Fine Art Postcard Exhibition — themed “The Creature Within” — closes Friday, Feb. 2. The show’s 273 small works, all for sale in an online auction, range from profound to playful and take a variety of approaches to the theme. In some cases, the creature is a monster; in others, mirrors turn the viewer into the creature. And the artists participating are as diverse as the works: The show is open to everyone who wishes to submit. The exhibition, at the college’s Leonor R. Fuller Gallery, is on view noon to 6 p.m. weekdays through Friday, with the closing reception beginning at 6 p.m. Friday and auction bidding closing at 7:30. The gallery is in the Minnaert Center for the Arts on SPSCC’s Olympia campus, 2011 Mottman Road SW.
Freelance writer Molly Gilmore is grateful that South Sound has so many talented people making art.
