Pathos

Saturday, February 28, 2026 • 7:30 p.m.
Location TBA

Harmonia Orchestra & Chorus
William White, conductor
Hsing-Hui Hsu, conductor
Rachel Lee Priday, violin

Program

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957)
Karelia Overture

Carlos Garcia (*1991)
Violin Concerto [world premiere]

— intermission —

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky
Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 (“Pathétique”)

About the Concert

Everett native Carlos Garcia is a musician who can seemingly do everything: in his young career he has composed music for Marvel films, Disney theme parks and (most impressively of all) Harmonia. Carlos also plays a mean fiddle, and that’s why it’s so exciting to have him collaborate with another major talent (and Harmonia favorite),  Rachel Lee Priday, on a new work for violin and orchestra. Music of Sibelius and Tchaikovsky — written in the frozen north but burning with red-hot passion — bookends the program.

This performance will last approximately one hour and 45 minutes, including one intermission.

Join music director William White and composer Carlos Garcia for a pre-concert talk beginning at 6:30 p.m.

Maestro’s Prelude

— William White

About the Soloist

Rachel Lee Priday

A consistently exciting artist, renowned globally for her spectacular technique, sumptuous sound, deeply probing musicianship, and “irresistible panache” (Chicago Tribune), violinist Rachel Lee Priday has appeared as soloist with major international orchestras, among them the Chicago, Houston, National, Pacific, St. Louis and Seattle Symphony Orchestras, Boston Pops Orchestra, Buffalo Philharmonic and Germany’s Staatskapelle Berlin. Her distinguished recital appearances have brought her to eminent venues, including Lincoln Center’s Mostly Mozart Festival, Chicago’s Ravinia Festival and Dame Myra Hess Memorial Series, Paris’ Musée du Louvre, Germany’s Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Festival and Switzerland’s Verbier Festival.

Passionately committed to new music and creating enriching community and global connections, Rachel Lee Priday’s wide-ranging repertoire and multidisciplinary collaborations reflect a deep fascination with literary and cultural narratives. Recent seasons have seen a new violin sonata commissioned from Pulitzer Prize finalist Christopher Cerrone and the world premiere of Matthew Aucoin’s The Orphic Moment in an innovative staging that mixed poetry, drama, visuals and music. She has collaborated often with Ballet San Jose, and was lead performer in “Tchaikovsky: None But the Lonely Heart” theatrical concerts with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Her work as soloist with the Asia America New Music Institute promoted cultural exchange between Asia and the Americas, combining premiere performances with educational outreach in the U.S., China, Korea and Vietnam.

This season, Ms. Priday performs in recital with pianist Bryan Wallick at the University of Washington and Colorado State University. Upcoming concerto engagements include the Springfield Symphony, Pensacola Symphony, Topeka Symphony and Verde Valley Sinfonietta, while recent appearances have included the Pacific Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Johannesburg Philharmonic, Kwazulu-Natal Philharmonic, Stamford Symphony and Bangor Symphony.

Rachel Lee Priday began her violin studies at the age of four in Chicago before moving to New York to study with the iconic pedagogue Dorothy DeLay; she continued her studies at the Juilliard School Pre-College Division with Itzhak Perlman. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MM from the New England Conservatory, where she worked with Miriam Fried. In 2019, she joined the faculty of the University of Washington School of Music as Assistant Professor of Violin. Ms. Priday has been profiled in The New Yorker, The Strad, Los Angeles Times and Family Circle. She performs on a Nicolo Gagliano violin (Naples, 1760), double-purfled with fleurs-de-lis, named Alejandro.