About the Peninsula Community Youth Orchestra
The Sequim Community Orchestra formed in 2012 with a mission to support education for students of all ages in Sequim. The SCO operates as a 501(c)3 charitable organization and is run by a volunteer board.
The SCO has two distinct programs:
- The SCO itself, a teaching orchestra which plays roughly high school level music and performs 3 times a year. It is led by a paid music director.
- The Peninsula Community Youth Orchestra, (PCYO) which is a children’s program that accepts beginner, intermediate, and advanced students. The children’s program performs with the SCO once a year at the Spring Family Concert and is led by a paid teacher.
The children’s program has operated out of Sequim since the SCO’s founding in 2012 and varies from 10-20 students.
In 2025, the Peninsula Community Youth Orchestra expanded the children’s program’s mission, encouraging string students from across the Olympic Peninsula to join and rehearse at Swisher Hall.
The Peninsula Community Youth Orchestra varies a bit from a traditional youth orchestra in that it accepts very young children who have not played before. Our primary requirement is that students can read, so they can be taught to read music. The beginners class rehearses separately from the intermediate and advanced students.