back in the barn
Concert series loses beloved violinist but carries on
Words by Michael C. Moore
Sisters Elisa and Amy Barston will perform with pianist Paige Molloy on July 29, 30 and August 5 and 6.
The 2023 edition of Concerts in the Barn, like its predecessors, will be sweet. It will also be bittersweet.
The eighth season of Alan Iglitzin and Leigh Hearon’s summer chamber music series at Trillium Woods Farm in Quilcene will run five weekends from July 29 to August 27 and is free to the public. As always, artists and patrons alike will revel in the sound of world-class chamber performances, seated on church pews or hay bales in the acoustics-rich barn or on the grassy berm outside.
Sadly, the festival, an offshoot of the Olympic Music Festival founded by Iglitzin, will proceed this year without one of its most popular performers and staunchest allies. Violinist Charles Wetherbee, an Olympic Music Festival and barn concerts fixture since 2002, died in January after a long battle with cancer.
“Even last summer, you wouldn’t have known he was sick,” Hearon said of Wetherbee, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2018. He mixed his treatments with his work, even flying at his own expense from his Boulder, Colorado, base to fill in during the 2021 festival when another artist had to bow out due to illness.
Iglitzin and Hearon both credit Wetherbee with being the lead arm-twister for a weekend of farewell concerts at Trillium Woods Farm in 2016, following Iglitzin’s announcement that he was retiring and ceding the Olympic Music Festival name to the Centrum organization in Port Townsend. After three “thanks and goodbye” concerts were finished, Wetherbee, along with dozens of other artists and hundreds of festival habitues, persevered to convince the couple to turn Concerts in the Barn into an annual event.
A world class violinist, Iglitzin purchased the 55-acre former dairy farm in 1976 as a rehearsal-retreat haven for his Philadelphia String Quartet (the Quartet in Residence at the University of Washington at the time). He deeded it to his wife following a short-lived retirement as festival host in 2015, prompted by a stroke that also ended his playing days.
She juggles managing the festival and the property, which also hosts weddings and retreats, with her own private investigation firm. She’s also a successful novelist and author of the Carson Stables Mystery series.
Iglitzin continues to help his wife with festival matters. He’s also been cataloging live recordings made during the Olympic Music Festival’s 32 years on the farm and is working with Hearon and a Seattle videographer on a series of visual memoirs. In addition, he’s busy filling the shelves of his library at their home on Bainbridge Island.
“I can’t do this any more,” the 91-year-old said, miming the act of drawing a bow over a fingerboard. “So I have been working on educating myself, which I feel very lucky to be able to do.
Photos: courtesy of Concerts in the Barn