‘Bainbridge Sketches’ debuts.

Music is the magic carpet for a whirlwind tour of the island.

Allen Strange’s “Bainbridge Sketches,” a melodic interpretation of four island locales, is a featured work when Patricia Strange leads the Bainbridge Island Youth Orchestra in concert Feb. 6.

Strange composed the work to bring together the junior and the senior youth orchestras – groups that rarely have the chance to perform as a larger body.

“My idea was to do a piece that actually combines the more experienced players with the beginners in a single work where they can all play together,” he said, “and, at the same time, introduce them to certain ideas in new music.”

“Bainbridge Sketches” is modeled after early 20th century composer Bela Bartok’s “Hungarian Sketches,” music that elaborates on “place” as theme.

Strange chose four island locations – Agate Passage, Battle Point, Rolling Bay and Hidden Cove – to be his focal points.

“Agate Passage was the most mysterious,” Strange said. “Think of the Native Americans getting back and forth from the island. They’d canoe across and those waters are treacherous. It left some spirits, some voices still hang out.”

The second movement, “Battle Point,” features the locale named for a battle between white settlers and Natives.

The third, Rolling Bay, pays tribute to the view across Puget Sound from the beach, while the closing movement, Hidden Cove, is a tribute to a hollow often made eerie by the fog.

All four sketches combine electronic and instrumental sound.

“The glue that sort of holds this together is an electronic soundtrack,” Strange said. “The sounds that I wanted to use sometimes could not be made by a traditional orchestra and so that’s when I turn to electronics. It goes along with the orchestra as they’re playing.”

Strange modifies pre-recorded sounds and creates wholly synthesized ones. For “Bainbridge Sketches,” recordings of Native American singing and drumming are the foundation for the soundtrack, but the recordings have been transformed by Strange’s electronic manipulations into something new.

The score also calls on the young musicians to play in unconventional ways; the wind section is called on to blow air through their instruments to simulate the sound of wind.

The young musicians enjoy the challenge, says BIYO senior orchestra violinist Trubee Davison, a long-time student of island Suzuki method teacher Kathrine Davies who plays a solo for another featured work, Antionio Vivaldi’s “Four Seasons.”

“I’ve never played anything like (Bainbridge Sketches),” Davison said. “It sort of takes modern technology and mixes it with classical instruments. And I like working with Allen, he’s a very talented musician and composer.”

Patricia – a violinist and conductor, who led the San Jose State University String Orchestra and whose Bainbridge chamber group, Island Soundscape Players, recently debuted here to acclaim – has led the junior division of the BIYO for three seasons, working in tandem with senior orchestra director George Ramsey.

The team has expanded the orchestra founded for stringed instruments to include winds, coached by Margaret Tufft.

Preparing for this concert has been a particular challenge. Patricia Strange had to bring the orchestra up to speed before the electronics could be added, and the youngsters must keep the precise time that the electronic beat demands.

“They can play their parts, but trying to stay rhythmically with the electronics is the difficulty. When they’re playing a Mozart symphony, if you slow down a little on a phrase, it’s okay, it all fits,” she said. “With this, if we get behind, the electronics keeps going like a train. And we have to keep with it.”

Neither Strange is a stranger to the challenges of new music.

A professor emeritus from San Jose State University, Allen Strange has been involved with music technology since the middle 1960s, penning the first comprehensive text on analog music synthesis in 1972. Although the Stranges have pioneered electronic performance and toured internationally, this concert marks the first time Allen has written an orchestral work that Pat has conducted.

“I’ve never written for a full orchestra before,” Allen said. “I’m very grateful to the Bainbridge Island Arts and Humanities Council for the grant that supported this work. They really made it possible. To go from the idea to the printed page and have it become sound, that’s very rewarding.”

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Local music

The combined senior and junior divisions of the Bainbridge Island Youth Orchestra, led by director Patricia Strange, perform works by Vivaldi, Dvorak, Bizet and island composer Allen Strange at 3 p.m. Feb. 6 at the Playhouse. There are no tickets for this free event; donations will benefit BIYO. Call 780-8449 for more information.