BREMERTON — Have some extra space in your building? The Bremerton Symphony is looking for a new rehearsal home.
For years, the orchestra has been rehearsing in the music building on the Olympic College Bremerton campus. But now that building is going to be torn down.
“For our rehearsal space, we’ve been partnering with Olympic College,” said Anna James Miller, Bremerton Symphony executive director. “But they’re in the middle of a huge construction project. They’re building a really beautiful new music building, but there’s a lot of transition going on, and at this point there’s some uncertainty about the timeline, about the space, the possibilities in terms of our need … We’re in limbo now as to hearing when the new building is going to be complete and which rooms are going to be available for us to use and whether those rooms are going to be able to accommodate our large ensembles.
“So, we’re feeling a lot of uncertainty about what our future home is going to be,” Miller said.
Meanwhile, the Bremerton Symphony Orchestra, Bremerton Symphony Chorale and Bremerton Youth Symphony have places to perform. The orchestra performs at the fine arts center at Bremerton High School six times a year. The chamber music groups perform at churches and smaller venues, and sometimes they are lucky enough to get to play in larger venues like the Admiral Theater when expenses allow, she said
But right now there’s no place to rehearse.
“We have musicians who travel from Olympia, Seattle, Kingston, Bainbridge Island, Silverdale, Poulsbo — all over — to be part of the music,” Miller said.
“As we look into our [75th] anniversary schedule in the fall , we’re right now hoping we find a real good partnership either with Olympic College or an alternative [rehearsal] space … with another community partner,” Miller said.
“We’re looking at about a 30 foot by 4o foot rehearsal space, plus some storage for about 100 music stands and chairs and for some of our large equipment such as our timpani and piano. As you can imagine, those things are not easily moved several times per week. We have to pay our crew and rent a truck.”
— Terryl Asla is a reporter for Kitsap News Group. He can be reached at tasla@soundpublishing.com.
