Kim Angelis was 10 years old when her mother first signed her up for violin lessons. She had been playing piano for six years by then, but the string instrument wasn’t even on her radar – she doesn’t remember expressing any interest in it at all. But she was young, and at the will of her parents.

“My mother never dreamed,” Angelis said, “that saying she loved the violin would lead to what I’ve done.”

Today, the list of what she’s done is robust. Angelis became a professional violinist before she graduated high school. Throughout the following five decades, her violin took her across the country and around the world – she performed in Taiwan, Chile and Botswana just to name a few. She made a career from her violin and became an accomplished performer and composer.

This month, Angelis released her ninth album, “Passages.” She and Jennifer Goodenberger, the album’s pianist, will perform a release concert at the Pioneer Presbyterian Church in Warrenton on Oct. 20 at 4 p.m.

“I really, really feel that this is the best C.D. I’ve ever done in my life,” she said. “I just followed it, wherever it led me.”

After high school, the violin led her to UC Irvine, where she majored in music. After that, it led her to a rock ensemble and eventually to her husband, who played bluegrass guitar and was on the hunt for a fiddler accompaniment.

And then, it led the pair to an international career in classical music.

Angelis has lived with her husband in the Columbia-Pacific region since the early 2000s. They have played as a duo since before they were married, and have released eight albums together.

This month, for the first time, Angelis released an album without her husband.

Throughout the past decade, her husband has struggled with early onset dementia. By 2016, he could no longer remember music, and the duo had to end their career together. Angelis was thrust into the caregiver role, and though she never complained, it took a toll on her. She wasn’t able to practice as frequently, and for the first time in her life, she stopped playing violin.

Her husband, who played classical guitar in all of her previous albums, now lives in a facility where he can receive care. After his relocation, Angelis turned back to the violin. But heartbreak soon struck again.

“I had just started to regroup,” Angelis said, “when I was diagnosed with breast cancer.”

She underwent months of chemotherapy, and her treatment stopped her yet again from playing her music.

“In order to have chemotherapy, they placed a port right where I hold the violin,” she said. The port was placed on the left side of her chest, which prohibited her from supporting the violin correctly and caused her arm to swell.

“I couldn’t play for six months,” she said. “That was really, really hard – being stopped a second time.”

But by the end of the year, the treatment stopped and the port came out. Finally, after the longest stint she could remember without playing the violin, she picked up her instrument again.

“I am so much more grateful now for being able to play the violin,” she said. “Words can’t really describe the gratitude and the joy, to know that after six months of not touching it, it was going to be O.K.”

Her new album is the accumulation of the past decade.

“This C.D. is called Passages because of many reasons,” she said. “I decided to call it Passages when I first was writing music for it back in 2013 and the technical passages in it were really, really hard … some of them are the most difficult things I’ve ever played.”

“And then, I went through different types of passages with loss and some really hard things,” she said. “But, the more I let go of things, the better I was able to cope with it.”

“We had her a year ago for another concert which just completely packed the church,” Dwight Caswell, the Pastor of the Pioneer Presbyterian Church and a Coast Weekend contributor, said. “I think it’s going to be a great concert.”

Kim Angelis C.D. release concert 

4 p.m. Sunday

Pioneer Presbyterian Churhc, 33324 Patriot Way, Warrenton

Donations accepted