Anchorage Bowl Chamber Orchestra returns to peninsula for 9th tour

They will perform at the Bear Creek Winery Botanical Garden on Friday and the Norman Lowell Art Gallery in Anchor Point on Saturday

The Anchorage Bowl Chamber Orchestra will return to the Kenai Peninsula for its ninth annual Kenai Peninsula Tour, with a show set for each of the first four days of June.

The group will first play in Seward at the K.M. Rae Education Building at 7:30 p.m. on Thursday, June 1. The next day they’ll play in Homer, at the Bear Creek Winery Botanical Garden, at 7:30 p.m. on Friday, June 2. Next, they’ll appear at the Norman Lowell Art Gallery in Anchor Point on Saturday, June 3 at 2 p.m. Finally, they’ll close out their weekend in Kenai at the Kenai Senior Center, Sunday, June 4 at 2 p.m. Each performance will be free to attend.

Kyle Lindsey, Zach Akins and Brett Lindsay, all members of the Anchorage Bowl Chamber Orchestra, said last week that the group was born of a large ensemble class at the University of Alaska Anchorage. As part of the class, they were supposed to go on a tour. That tour didn’t happen.

“So we decided to go anyway, without the professor,” they said. “We thought that was real fun.”

Since then, they said they’ve grown into a nonprofit, and they’ve continued the tradition of a Kenai Peninsula tour each year toward the end of spring and the beginning of summer.

At each show, they said there will be a variety of styles of music and also configurations of the orchestra. They said they play both classical and modern music, but also play with up to a roughly 15-person orchestra or as duets, trios, quartets and quintets.

“We’re a group of string players that can play a lot of different types of music,” they said. “Most substantially classically, on this tour.”

Their goal, they said, is to lower the barrier for concert performance. That’s why shows are free, and that’s why they seek to “disrupt tradition.” They encourage people to clap whenever they want, to come and go as they please, and they hold their shows in more open public spaces than a traditional auditorium.

Now preparing for their ninth visit to the peninsula, the three said that the people and the connections they’ve built in various communities are what keeps bringing them back.

“The people on the peninsula have proven themselves so appreciative and so kind, so enthusiastic about coming in and sharing our art,” they said.

But of course, they said, they don’t mind visiting for the sights and the food.

“It’s not difficult to find a good reason to drive down the peninsula the first week of June,” they said.

For more information about the Anchorage Bowl Chamber Orchestra, visit facebook.com/AnchorageChamberOrchestra

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.