Category: Portland, OR

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced direct grants to 631 nonprofit arts groups totally almost 30 million dollars. The Oregon Symphony will receive $50,000 and the Portland Youth Philharmonic will receive $25,000, the Eugene Symphony will receive $50,000, and Early Music America (headquartered in Seattle) will receive $25,000. For the complete list of organizations that received awards, click here.

Also, the Vancouver Symphony (WA) has just announced that it is the recipient of a $40,000 grant from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. For more information, click here.

The audience filled every seat at the Cabell Center on the campus of the Catlin Gabel School in eager anticipation of an all-Mozart concert that took place on Tuesday (June 30). This performance ushered in the second week of concerts presented by Chamber Music Northwest with a program consisting of music for string quartet, a quintet for piano and winds, and a quartet for piano and strings. Continue reading Three Mozart pieces glisten at Chamber Music Northwest concert

Harold Gray, now in his 31st year as artistic director of the Portland Piano International, is getting geared up for the 2009 Portland International Piano Festival. Running from July 12th through the 19th at the World Forestry Center, the festival is jam packed with an intriguing slate of artists, teachers, and films.

I chatted with Gray at Café Umbria in the Pearl District where he gave me the lowdown on the festival. Continue reading Harold Gray talks about the 2009 Portland International Piano Festival

I came to the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with great anticipation on Saturday evening (June 27), because Helmuth Rilling and the Oregon Bach Festival choir and orchestra were in town to perform Haydn’s “Creation.” I had sung this piece under Rilling at least ten years ago (more about that later), so I willingly took a seat in the balcony where this hall’s acoustics are best.

Rilling knows this music forward and backwards, and he conducted the entire piece from memory, but this performance needed more spark and much more volume from the chorus. The lack of vocal heft from the chorus became evident right away when the choir sang “Und es ward Licht” (“And there was light”). The orchestra easily overpowered the singers so much that the word “Licht” was completely obliterated – even the final “t” couldn’t be detected. Later in the first part of the piece, the orchestra overwhelmed the chorus again. Fortunately, the balance between the orchestra and the choir was a lot better in the second and third parts of the piece, but the chorus still needed to project a lot more. Continue reading Oregon Bach Festival’s “Creation” in need of more spark

Haydn and Mendelssohn have been dead for a very long time, but their presence is felt every time their music is played by virtuosic musicians like the ones who took the stage on Tuesday  (June 23) at Chamber Music Northwest’s opening concert series. I attended the concert at Catlin Gabel School and found the each  performance inspiring, because the performers got inside the music. Continue reading Chamber Music Northwest opens with robust Haydn and Mendelssohn

Music critic David Stabler of The Oregonian has a full report on the financial problems at the Oregon Symphony online here. It’s a tough time for arts organizations everywhere, and the orchestra’s president Elaine Calder says that she will scrutinize every nook and cranny in its budget and operations. Calder was in Chicago a week ago for the 64th National Conference of the League of American Orchestra, and I’m sure that fund raising and budgets were among the issues most discussed.

Chicago is where Oregon Symphony conductor Carlos Kalmar is leading the Grant Park Orchestra. Here’s a very positive review of Kalmar and the orchestra in the Chicago Tribune. I don’t know how long the link will be available, so I’ll excerpt a quote from the article by the Tribune’s classical music critic, John von Rhein:

Just as the festival is observing a major milestone, so is Carlos Kalmar, who’s celebrating his 10th season as music director. The orchestra is playing better than ever under his vigorous leadership, a fact that was evident in the two Russian war horses that made up the program, Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto and Mussorgsky’s “Pictures at an Exhibition,” heard in the Ravel orchestration.

Here’s a link to a positive review in the Chicago Classical Review of another Kalmar-led concert at Grant Park.

All in all, the Oregon Symphony is not the only orchestra that has made great strides under Kalmar.

Chamber Music Northwest opens its 39th summer season next week, offering five weeks (June 22 – July 26) of great music with top tier musicians from all over the nation. This summer’s programming celebrates the 200th anniversaries of Felix Mendelssohn (who was born in 1809) and Joseph Haydn (who died in 1809), and the music of many other greats in the classical field will be performed as well: Beethoven, Brahms, Mozart, Bach, Schumann, Vivaldi, and Tchaikovsky. Several concerts will blend pieces from Telemann, Marcello, Schoenberg, Bartok, Bloch, Korngold, Kernis, Adams, Schubert, and others to keep your ears tuned up. Also consider the following: Continue reading Chamber Music Northwest blasts off next week

This year’s competition had a lot of excitement after the last concert finished. The press in attendance was very divided regarding who the medalists would be. Most of the critics agreed that Bulgarian pianist Evgeni Bozhanov played himself out of contention with his bombastic style. But all of the five remaining competitors were mentioned as possibilities. We should have done a pool to see who would’ve predicted the outcome correctly.

The awards program featured Portland-native Fred Child as the master of the ceremonies. It turns out that the blind Japanese pianist who shared the gold medal, Nobuyuki Tsujii, released a recording last year (many of the pianists in the competition have already done albums), and it’s now selling like hotcakes, according to this report. That album also contains a couple of Tsujii’s own compositions.

I was impressed to learn how thoroughly and carefully the participants are initially screened. Richard Rodzinski and John Giordano assemble a jury that travels around the globe to hear the best pianists. Still, ten of the final 30 pianists had some Juilliard connections, which either points to how good Juilliard is or means that the screening process still needs some improvement. In any case, at the competition itself, the jury puts their scores into a computer (somewhat like the BCS system for NCAA football) and the computer gives them the final results.

Of course, not everyone is happy with how things turn out. Benjamin Ivry, in his article in the Wall Street Journal, thought that the jurors were way off the mark. He sounds fairly bitter. It should be noted that Ivry incorrectly states that Giordano is the regular conductor of the Fort Worth Symphony. Miguel Harth-Bedoya is the conductor of that orchestra. Scott Cantrell of the Dallas Morning News points out, in this posting, some other inaccuracies in Ivry’s argument. Also, Ivry doesn’t think that blind pianists should play with orchestras. That’s nonsense. Then a deaf composer like Beethoven shouldn’t write music.

Now I’m wondering if there should be a competition for pianists in which only new music is performed. Assembling a jury for such a competition would be very interesting. Just for fun, all the pianists could be asked to play John Cage’s 4’33”.

From the moment that members of the Pink Martini ensemble stepped out onto the stage on Monday evening (June 1), the standing-room only audience of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert gave them and the members of the Oregon Symphony a city-wide group hug. This was the second in three nights of sold-out performances, and the festive atmosphere bathed the concert in a glow that made the added mood lighting unnecessary.

I came to this concert with some skepticism, because I had heard a Pink Martini concert with another orchestra (on or near Valentine’s Day) a few years ago and came away unimpressed. This time, however, Thomas Lauderdale and his sophisticated lounge ensemble were on top of their game. Another problematic element are orchestral arrangements, because they can make the whole thing sluggish, but to my delight, from the get-go at the top of the program with the first notes of “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” (“Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps”) by Cuban composer Osvaldo Farrés, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony knocked the music out of the ballpark. And they continued to do so with each number on the program, highlighting the singing of China Forbes, the playing of instrumentalists in the 12-member ensemble, and the playing of the orchestra, including some featured spots for several principal orchestra members.

Continue reading Pink Martini and Oregon Symphony wow audience at live-recording concert

The Oregonian reports that the Oregon Ballet Theatre is in desparate need of $750,000 by June 30th or it may have to shut down altogether. The monetary problems have been caused by a severe loss of donations and a loss of revenue due to the snowy weather during its performances of “The Nutcracker.” To help rescue OBT, nationally known dancers from around the nation will come to Portland to perform in a gala on June 12. But as the article points out, that valiant effort may reduce the debt – even cut it in half – but it will take some concerned patrons to step up to the plate and help to save Oregon’s flagship ballet company. Other creative ways for OBT to raise money may be through a special fund-raisers at Nike, Adidas, and other local companies that have an interest in artistic, athletic talent. The OBT web site contains details about the performance on June 12. Their regular season finale will take place on June 5, 6, and 7. I urge you to support OBT!