Portland

It has been a pretty heady week for Portland Opera. The company took a gamble in producing Philip Glass’s Orphée on Friday evening (November 6) at Keller Auditorium and emerged a winner. This rarely heard opera retells the Orpheus legend according to the vision of Jean Cocteau, and it held a near-capacity audience spellbound.

The sound of a loud pop greeted the audience at the Portland Baroque Orchestra concert on Saturday evening (October 24) at Kaul Auditorium. It also surprised violin virtuoso Monica Huggett, because she just broke her E string about five seconds after beginning the first piece. After halting the orchestra, Huggett excused herself for a few [...]

Good news in Portland. Four foundations have awarded the Oregon Symphony $1.45 million to support its budget. Kudos go to the James. F. and Marion L. Miller Foundation, the Meyer Memorial Trust of Portland, The Collins Foundation, and the William Randolph Hearst Foundation. This calls for a major fanfare! Congratulations to the orchestra and its [...]

The Fear No Music ensemble has no qualms about tackling unusual music. On Friday evening (September 16) at the Colonial Heights Presbyterian Church, the Fear No Music musicians performed some very eclectic numbers that loosely paid homage to other composers, ideas, or something vaguely intangible. The music stretched the ears of the audience with all [...]

Jon Kimura Parker delivered a finely honed and satisfying performance of Johannes Brahms’ Piano Concerto No. 1 with the Oregon Symphony on Saturday evening (Oct. 3) at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in its first concert of the classical music season. I really liked the way that Parker painted a lovely canvas with this piece. [...]

A near-capacity audience at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall reveled in an unusual gala concert with the Oregon Symphony and virtuosi of the banjo, mandolin, tabla, and double bass on Saturday evening (September 26). The orchestra welcomed Bela Fleck, Chris Thile, Zakir Hussain, and Edgar Meyer and whipped up some very new music by these [...]

Violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg is known internationally known for her dynamic and virtuosic performances, but over the past few years she has successfully launched her own record label (NSS Music) and just last year she became the music director of the New Century Chamber Orchestra, a top-tier ensemble that is based in San Francisco. On August [...]

Tchaikovsky really knew how to create a barn burner when he wrote the String Sextet in D Minor “Souvenir de Florence,” Op. 70, and it really brought down the house at Thursday (July 23) evening’s Chamber Music Northwest concert. Even the first movement of Tchaikovsky’s gem, which started in electrifying fashion, succeeded to build tension, [...]