Start your year with classical music. The Pinellas Park Civic Orchestra performs live orchestral music at the Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 15, and 3 p.m. Sunday, Jan. 18.

Conductor and artistic director Martin H. Seggelke leads the community orchestra of 60 volunteer musicians who rehearse Mondays at 7 p.m. With city support, the nonprofit orchestra performs from October through April at the performing arts center.

Labor of love

“We have young members who are still in high school, and we have seasoned musicians in their 80s still going strong,” Seggelke said. “It makes for a unique conglomerate of different experiences and stages in life. The beauty about making music together is that we all sit down with one communal goal of just making beautiful sounds.”

He challenges anyone to find a community musician who shows up thinking they’ll play poorly.

“Absolutely not. Everybody supports one another,” he said. “It’s such a beautiful team activity.”

The program includes four classical works: Richard Strauss’ “Feierlicher Einzug der Ritter des Johanniterordens,” Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s “Eine kleine Nachtmusik,” the Capuzzi Double Bass Concerto featuring bass principal Elliot Large, and the romantic “Vorspiel und Liebestod” from Richard Wagner’s “Tristan und Isolde.”

In his fifth season with the orchestra, Large said the Capuzzi piece was written when the bass had only four strings.

“It was a side part of the orchestra, not like today’s bass, which is the heart of the orchestra,” Large said in a social media post. “Now the bass can sing, so I made this piece about a voice finding itself for the first time. Once I identified the theme of singing for my performance, I decided to start singing more and became a karaoke fan. I guess you might say I just found my voice with this instrument and this piece.”

History

The Pinellas Park Orchestra Inc., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, was founded by Dean Sisson in 1964 as the First Congregational Church Orchestra. Rehearsals and performances were held at the First Congregational Church of Christ in St. Petersburg.

After Sisson’s death, his wife, Marie Sisson, conducted until 1988. Michael Ficcocelli took over until 1992, followed by Richard VanDommelen. When the church closed in December 1994, the orchestra moved to Pinellas Park and became the Pinellas Park Civic Orchestra.

Art Hansuld began co-conducting with VanDommelen in 2009 and became sole conductor in 2012. The orchestra incorporated as a Florida nonprofit in 2011 and attained IRS 501(c)(3) status in 2015. Seggelke joined as assistant conductor in 2018 and became conductor and artistic director in 2020.

Seggelke moved from San Francisco to St. Petersburg in 2016 to teach at USF St. Petersburg after a career in Germany with orchestras and operas. He completed his doctorate at the Eastman School of Music.

“I’m the odd duck,” he said. “My dad coached Germany’s national volleyball team, my mother was a northern Germany champion in athletics, and my sister swam and played volleyball. I was the music guy.”

He started playing recorder in kindergarten, then clarinet, performing in community ensembles and the German Marine Band before moving to the United States in 2003.

When not making music, he teaches Reiki and works as a scuba diving instructor.

“I think I’m afraid of being bored,” he said.

Join up

The orchestra welcomes new musicians.

“We are looking for string instruments, bass, percussionists, brass and woodwind as well as harp,” Seggelke said. “Everybody is a volunteer and we just get together for the fun of it. We are truly a full symphony orchestra, not 100% perfect, but dedicated.”

The Pinellas Park Performing Arts Center is at 4951 78th Ave. N. Seating is first-come, first-served. For information, visit pinellasparkorchestra.org or facebook.com/PPC.Orchestra.