Violinist Stefan Jackiw If you have time before your late night Halloween activities on Saturday night, you really owe it to yourself to head down to the Oregon Symphony’s Classical series concert on Saturday night (repeating Sunday afternoon only). Why? Well, I’ll tell you why. First of all, you’ll get to hear our phenomenal woodwind
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For those of you who are not yet aware of it, there is a concert series up at the OHSU Auditorium on the OHSU campus on SW Sam Jackson Park Road. It’s been around the last few years, but due to the location and not much of a budget for publicity, it hasn’t gained a
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Sam Bergman over at the Minnesota Orchestra has a great post about the apparent double standard between opera companies and symphony orchestras. In brief: orchestras are constantly being berated for having structural deficits and are forced to produce more and more for-profit-like business models, while opera companies lose tremendous amounts of money on high-tech experiments
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After our last classical series concert, the orchestra stayed for an extra 30 minutes to get an important job done: it was orchestra photo night. Every few years, a new portrait of the orchestra and its music director is taken. In virtually every other year, the photo is a standard, staid, and well, boring actually,
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Nancy Ives/Photo © Charles Noble I had the pleasure of venturing North into the wilds of Vancouver, Washington to hear Nancy Ives, principal cellist of the Oregon Symphony, perform the great Dvorak Cello Concerto with the Vancouver Symphony under the direction of Salvator Brotons. I don’t really want to write a review, other than to
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I’ve been working up a bunch of repertoire outside of the orchestra over the last several weeks, and it finally got to the stage where I had to commit to one of the most terrifying things a musician can do: I recorded myself. If the average person is more terrified by the prospect of public
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Marilyn de Oliveira We know that we’re lucky to have Marilyn de Oliveira join us as our new Assistant principal (or as one dubious friend of mine likes to say “ass prince”) cellist this season. She’s a vital and sensitive artist, but also brings a brilliant smile and equally brilliant wardrobe to the section as
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Michael Tilson Thomas/Photo: G. Schirmer If you missed the San Francisco Symphony’s wonderful exploration of four major works from the classical music repertoire (explicated and conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas) – then you’re in luck. If you’re a digi-phile such as myself, you can click over to the iTunes Store and download each of the
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Gustavo Dudamel’s opening night concert with the Los Angeles Philharmonic will be broadcast on PBS’ Great Performances series Wednesday evening, October 21st, at 9:00 p.m. Here in Portland, that will be KOPB.
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Kiril Gerstein, pianist Tonight is the last of the three concerts making up the first of Classical Series B at the Oregon Symphony. The program is a variation upon the famous “Three B’s” concert format – usually Bach, Beethoven and Brahms. This time it’s Bach, Bernstein and Beethoven. It pits two pieces by very well-known
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I’ve been living with the new Kim Kashkashian recording entitled Neharót for some time now, and find its title track Neharót Neharót (by the Israeli composer Betty Olivero, b.1954) to be one of the most affecting new pieces of music that I’ve encountered in the past decade. I liken its first impact on me to
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The Oregon Symphony announced three major grant received from foundations this month – all new money, rather than repeated funding from prior years – in fact the most recent grant from one of these foundations was received in 2005. The education programs will benefit during the 2009/2010 season from a $50,000 grant from the William
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This is the time of year where a curious shift happens: the classical music season heats up, while the weather outside cools down. This post in just going to be a hodge-podge of random thoughts, truly full of daily observations, rather than what is usually posted here (not sure what that means, anyway). So, let’s
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I’m guessing that Oregon Ballet Theatre is doing very well with their ticket sales for their Emerald Retrospective this week – I tried to buy tickets to their Friday night performance and the only tickets available were over $100 each – too rich for my blood! I’m glad that the less expensive seats are selling
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Proof that musicians just keep on going and going – a wonderful profile of Wilsonville violinist Harold Wolf from today’s Oregonian newspaper: WILSONVILLE — Harold Wolf’s beloved 1745 violin is gone now, passed to a granddaughter who shares his passion. But at 88, Wolf still plays, practicing twice a day on another violin. And twice
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