Winning playwrights honored

A ceremony to honor the winning playwrights of the 2016 One-Act Play Competition is set for Friday, Feb. 24 at Key City Playhouse, 419 Washington St., Port Townsend.

This event is free and open to the public. Light refreshments are to be served in the playhouse lobby at 5:30 p.m., followed by the ceremony at 6 p.m.

The ceremony, hosted by Port Townsend Arts Commissioner Lisa Wentworth, honors Hewitt Brooks, Michael Cavett, Doug Given, Mark Rose, Deborah Weise and D.D. Wigley.

Port Townsend Mayor Deborah Stinson is to present the awards.

The event also includes short excerpts from selected winning plays. All the plays are to be performed at PT PlayFest 21, which opens March 2 and runs through March 12. PlayFest 21 features the six winning one-act plays, and staged readings of full-length plays in development by Jeni Mahoney, Duncan Frost and featured guest playwright Wendy MacLeod. The Port Townsend Arts Commission’s annual playwriting workshop, led by MacLeod, and other interactive festival events are free and open to the public during the festival.

Orchestra presents Mozart, more

The Port Townsend Community Orchestra presents its winter concert, titled “Mozart and More,” at 2 p.m., Sunday, Feb. 26 at the Chimacum High School auditorium, 91 W. Valley Road, Chimacum. The concert is free, and donations are welcome. A pre-concert talk is set for 1:15 p.m.

Guest conductor Gil Seeley leads the program, which begins with soloist Anne Krabill performing the Oboe Concerto in D minor by Venetian composer Alessandro Marcello.

The Peninsula Singers are to join the orchestra for Randall Thompson’s “Frostiana,” in which seven of Robert Frost’s poems are set to music, including “The Road Not Taken, “Choose Something Like a Star” and “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Solemn Vespers” brings repeat engagements from soprano Cynthia Webster, alto Vicki Helwick, tenor Robin Reed and bass Ray Chirayeth.

Rounding out the concert is “An Outdoor Overture” by Aaron Copland. This is a work in the period when Copland was moving to simplify his music and incorporate folk tunes. Conductor Alexander Richter requested this from Copland as part of a program “American Music for American Youth.”

Seeley is a finalist in the orchestra’s search for a new music director. He was instructor and assistant professor at University of Southern California–Santa Cruz, and a professor and director at Portland’s Lewis & Clark College for 35 years. Last spring, he was a guest conductor for the Rainshadow Chorale. He received the Aaron Copland Award for performing American music in 2002, and the Oregon Governor’s Arts Award in 2007.

Euro strum ambient tunes

Port Townsend guitarist Joe Euro performs original scores, jazz, improvisations and ambient music at a Trinity United Methodist Church Candlelight Concert set for 7 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 23 at the Uptown District church, 609 Taylor St.

The performance is to include pieces from the classical guitar repertoire; tunes of light instrumental jazz by Theolonius Monk, Antônio Carlos Jobim, Fernando Sor and Luiz Bonfá; and possibly some blues, according to a press release. Euro is also to play a number of his original works from his five previously released CDs, which are to be available for purchase at the performance. Euro often uses three or four guitars that are tuned differently and look and sound different.

Admission is by a suggested $10 donation (children admitted free) to benefit local Port Townsend agencies and Trinity’s music and historic Victorian restoration program. Refreshments are served following the performance. For more information, call 774-1644 or email

rdanpurnell@msn.com.

Quebecois concert, workshop Feb. 27

The Quimper Grange presents master fiddler André Brunet of Quebec for a workshop and house concert, Monday, Feb. 27 at the Grange hall, 1219 Corona St.

The workshop, for any aspiring Quebecois fiddlers, is 3-4:30 p.m., followed by a 7 p.m. concert. Admission is by donation, a suggested $15 for the workshop, and $15-$25 for the concert.

A veteran of the Festival of American Fiddle Tunes, Brunet last played to a sold-out house in Port Townsend with his band, De Temps Antan, in 2011. In this solo performance, he shares his love for the traditional music of Quebec, bringing this exuberant music to life with his fiddling, singing and foot percussion.

‘Tides’ author gives talk Feb. 23 at NWMC

Jonathan White discusses his new book, “Tides: The Science and Spirit of the Ocean,” at 5 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 23 at the Northwest Maritime Center (NWMC), 431 Water St.

The event is presented by the NWMC and cosponsored by the Northwest Straits Foundation.

In the 1980s, White founded the Resource Institute, a nonprofit educational organization for which he hosted a seminar series aboard Crusader, a 65-foot wooden schooner that sailed the waters of the Pacific Northwest. Crusader’s odysseys nearly ended in 1990 when the boat ran aground and was nearly destroyed on a large tide in Alaska’s Kalinin Bay. Shaken and intrigued by his underestimation of tides and their power, White set off on a quest across the globe to understand the history, science and majesty of one of our planet’s most remarkable phenomena, according to a press release.

In “Tides,” White takes readers on a journey of discovery around the globe to witness the largest, fastest, scariest and most amazing tides in the world, according to a press release. His journeys took him to the Arctic and to the Qiantang River in China. At France’s Mont Saint-Michel, he learned how the monks were inspired by the tide, and at the Royal Society of London, he discovered how Plato, Aristotle, da Vinci, Newton, Descartes and many other noted thinkers had been captivated by the tide’s mystery. White also demonstrates how, in this age of drastic global climate shifts, tides offer critical insight into the planet’s future, according to a press release.

A ‘dazzling’ revelation

Artist Don Tiller was commissioned to paint the Port Townsend Film Festival 2017 poster image, which is to be unveiled at 5:30 p.m., Saturday, March 4 at Tiller’s new first-floor gallery in Flagship Landing, 1015 Water St. The public is welcome to attend. “It’s always fascinating to see how each artist captures the spirit of the festival each year,” said festival executive director Janette Force. “[Tiller’s] dazzling image of our outdoor movie on Taylor Street is completely different than any poster we’ve ever had.”