“Sublime Simplicity and Peacefulness”: Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto
2025-2026 Concert One

Sunday, October26, 2025 | 3PM
Sammamish Hills Lutheran Church
22818 SE 8th Street, Sammmish, WA 98074

Often 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.

Holidays in Sammamish
2024-2025 Concert Two

Sunday, December 7, 2025 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts Center

The 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.

Beethoven & Schubert
2025-2026 Concert Three

Sunday, February 22, 2026 | 2 PM
Eastlake Performing Arts Center

Historians are divided on whether they actually met face-to-face, but Ludwig van Beethoven and Franz Schubert were definitely a mutual admiration society based on their music. 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 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 two of these geniuses' symphonies back-to-back: Schubert's Symphony No. 5 (written at the age of 19) and Beethoven's Symphony No. 1 (from his 29th year). The concert opens with Schubert's rousing overture to Rosamunde.

Stage and Screen
2025-2026 Concert Four

Sunday, April 26, 2026 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts Center

A 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.

"A Happy, Blissful Song": The Blue Danube
2025-2026 Concert Five

Sunday, June 7, 2026 | 2PM
Eastlake Performing Arts Center

The 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.