This coming Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon in performances at Orcas Center, Catherine Pederson will conduct the Orcas Choral Society for the last time. Catherine will be stepping down after 33 years in which she has led the Choral Society in bringing season after season of musical beauty to the community.

On an island blessed with an abundance of musical talent and superb musical groups Catherine has been an outstanding inspiration. An elegant and charming champion of the choral tradition, Catherine has taken the Orcas Choral Society to a level of excellence recognized and acclaimed by audiences in venues from the Orcas Grange to Scotland and Carnegie Hall.

Orcas Center has been one of those venues for many of the Society’s performances under Catherine’s leadership. But her link to us, and our debt to her and the Pederson family, have been both broader and deeper. Catherine herself and her daughter Jenny have both served as President of the Orcas Center Board of Trustees. And Catherine and her late husband, Dale, were a driving force in the planning and building of the beautiful facility that houses the Center today.

So as Catherine steps down from leadership of the Orcas Choral Society, the Board of Trustees of Orcas Center joins with her friends all over the island to extend our deepest thanks, best wishes and admiration for the great contribution she — and her family — have made to the cultural life of Orcas.

Joe Massey

President

Orcas Center Board of Trustees