Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
July 2018
Literary Arts Oregon Book Awards Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon

Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium: concentrated wisdom

by CHRISTINA RUSNAK Editor’s note: this is the second of our two-part coverage of the Oregon Bach Festival’s Composers Symposium. Read Gary Ferrington’s story here. This year marked the 25th anniversary of the Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium (OBFCS) led by renowned

All the Bard’s plays, three actors, one wild night

If we’re keeping score, I have six titles to go before I’ve seen all of Shakespeare’s plays on stage at least once — Merry Wives of Windsor, Titus Andronicus, Two Noble Kinsmen, and the three parts of Henry VI. But that claim

Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium: big tent

Story, photos and video by GARY FERRINGTON When the 105 invited composers in last month’s 25th Oregon Bach Festival Composers Symposium asked the veteran composers in residence for advice about how to forge a career in music, over and over again one concept

Out of Sterno: heroine’s journey

Out of Sterno, the Deborah Zoe Lauffer play that concludes its run at the Siren Theater on Sunday, July 29, manages to teach (and not preach) us how to be better citizens. Dotty, the heroine of Out of Sterno, has never left

FilmWatch Weekly: Brazil nuts rejoice

The Northwest Film Center has just wrapped up its epic, weeks-long centenary tribute to Ingmar Bergman. I was going to write “iconic Swedish director Ingmar Bergman” or “canonical philosopher of cinema Ingmar Bergman” but, you know, if you’re reading this column and

David Ludwig: telling the earth’s story through music

We chamber music devotees were gathered in Lincoln Performance Hall for one last night of concerti—a program of modern works closing Chamber Music Northwest’s Winter Festival—and the CMNW crew were all in paradoxically high spirits. When Executive Director Peter Bilotta came on

Fragmentation in motion: An interview with Jaleesa Johnston

This past April, I had the pleasure of interviewing artists kiki nicole (they/them) and ariella tai (they/them) about their work through the first and the last—an experimental film/video and new media arts project. This endeavor offers a platform to amplify and support

DramaWatch Weekly: time to JAW

Summer stinks. Sure, the long days are great, but the summer sun is a hot-tempered tyrant. There’s no good basketball to watch. And maybe worst of all, there’s not as much theater to see. Ah, but then there’s JAW. Portland Center Stage’s

MusicWatch Weekly: comings and goings

Portland’s summer music scene would feel incomplete without Portland SummerFest Opera in the Park, the annual free, family friendly opera performance in Washington Park Amphitheater, with the audience arrayed on their blankets gazing down at singers and orchestra on the amphitheater stage.

DanceWatch Weekly: A holiday just for dance

Saturday, July 28, is National Dance Day. Shouldn’t it also be a national holiday? Don’t we need a holiday to dance? “So You Think You Can Dance” judge Nigel Lythgoe invented National Dance Day to promote dance education and physical fitness. Lythgoe

Newport honors favorite sons David Ogden Stiers, Ernest Bloch

The central Coast pays homage to two of its famous former citizens this month. As part of the Oregon Coast Council for the Arts’ capital campaign program, plans are under way to change the name of the Performing Arts Center’s Black Box

Beta Percussion Institute: crossroads of performance and composition

The University of Oregon School of Music and Dance, usually empty and quiet during the dog days of summer, is about to become a vibrant soundscape of performers and composers attending the first Beta Percussion International Institute August 4-10 — and you

Verona Quartet: musical conversations

It’s a good thing the Verona Quartet members are young and energetic, because they’ve been getting quite a workout in Portland this month.As part of Chamber Music Northwest’s 2018 Summer Festival, they will play Haydn, Beethoven, and Brahms at Portland State University’s

As You Like It, indoors & out

If the heat of summer has you longing to escape to the cool shade of the forest, you’re not alone: The lovers (both hesitant and willing) in Bag&Baggage’s production of Shakespeare’s comedy, As You Like It, are also escaping to the forest,

Bright Sheng interview: cross-cultural emissary

Bright Sheng is a pianist, conductor, and composer of music in various genres, including opera, orchestral, and chamber music. He’s also a teacher and musicologist, having studied both Eastern and Western music extensively. His resume includes heavy-duty recognition, such as the Guggenheim

Portland’s New King of Comedy

Stakes were high at Helium Comedy Club’s sold-out Portland’s Funniest Person competition on Wednesday night. Twelve comedians, who had survived a month-long gauntlet, had one last chance to win over the audience and judges. After two and a half hours of stand-up,

DramaWatch: Clown ‘Menagerie’

“Being a ‘memory play,’ The Glass Menagerie can be presented with unusual freedom of convention,” wrote Tennessee Williams in the production notes to his great 1940s story of a family trapped between hard realities and comforting illusions. Williams might never have suspected,

Interview: Tahni Holt talks about ‘Rubble Bodies’

“Rubble Bodies brings up the possibilities for me of something after a collapse, where we don’t actually know how it’s organized yet,” Portland choreographer Tahni Holt told me over coffee last week as we talked about her new dance. This idea she

DanceWatch Weekly: A dance that can be whatever it wants to be

“Honestly, the real reason for this production is because I wanted to get Shannon Stewart here (in Portland) again,” said Portland choreographer Tahni Holt when we met for coffee last week at Posies Bakery & Cafe in NE Portland. “She’s just a

MusicWatch Weekly: indoor opera, outdoor jazz

When Portland Opera switched to a summer season last year, one stated reason was to avoid competition with other similar events. But operas and their American-born cousins, stage musicals, seem to be proliferating this summer. There’s no glass slipper or fairy godmother,

Singing composer Ernest Bloch’s praises in Newport

NEWPORT — He’s one of Newport’s most famous former residents, but unless you’re a classical music buff, odds are you haven’t heard of him. That would be Ernest Bloch, the composer known in his day as the fourth B, after Bach, Beethoven

A Cinderella story for modern times

While the temperature in downtown Portland was inching toward 100 degrees on Sunday afternoon something cool was happening in the Newmark Theatre, and it wasn’t just the air-conditioning. Portland Opera was kicking into the second performance of its current run of Gioachino

Photo First: The Albany Carousel

ALBANY — Every small town wants something to put it on the map. Now, after fifteen years of hard work, Albany has that something—a remarkable new carousel. This project, which is called the Albany Carousel over its entrance and is officially named

‘Beyond the Cultural Revolution’ preview: cultural confluence

Two decades ago, Chamber Music Northwest artistic director David Shifrin, the clarinetist who still leads the Portland festival, had admired a clarinet quintet written for him by Bright Sheng, one of China’s finest composers, who’d moved to the United States in 1982.

Newberg professional theater goes beyond “The Hamlet Show”

There are surely stretches over the year when not much is going on in Yamhill County, artistically speaking. Those lazy weeks will afford opportunities for deep dives into our scene, with in-depth interviews and profiles of individual artists. But July is not

Portland Meets Portland

It used to be that a piece of good news brought some cheer and then I’d move on. I don’t know if it is true for you or not, but these days a piece of good news makes me also feel a

#//< EMBEDDED >//# review: con job

by MARIA CHOBAN “Want some candy, little girl?” Any good con job, whether hooking a future junkie or a theater audience depends on great acting. I said “Yes,” grabbed the candy, then allowed Pratik Motwani to roller-coaster me through his 75-minute short

DramaWatch: Can’t pay? Must pay.

“To all professional theatre companies and their donors and sponsors, Susan and I will no longer donate to organizations paying less than minimum wage.” On July 6, that simple message was posted to the Facebook page of Leonard Magazine, who, along with

A Diasporist, etc.,etc.

Last summer the Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education celebrated the opening of its new home with a stunning exhibit, Grisha Bruskin’s ALEFBET: The Alphabet of Memory. In case anyone was wondering if such quality could see repeat performances, the answer

When sports & Shakespeare collide

By CHRISTOPHER GONZALEZ When our loved ones ask us, “Why, dear – why do you want to spend three hours of our evening watching, perhaps for the fifteenth time, yet another Shakespeare production?” we ought not to suggest that we go simply

MusicWatch Weekly: pan man returns

Andy Akiho’s previous Chamber Music Northwest appearances with percussionist pal Ian Rosenbaum revealed both performance virtuosity — on the 39-year-old New Yorker’s unlikely instrument, the steel pan — and also a distinctive and appealing compositional imagination. In one of the summer festival’s

Revolutionary theater at Deep End

By CHRISTOPHER GONZALEZ From new dramatic forms, to teaching philosophy, to administrative structure and beyond, Deep End Theater is revolutionary theater in all aspects. Led by the indomitable Domeka Parker, this Portland ensemble is changing the perception of what improv is capable

A life, stitched in time

I had the great pleasure recently to meet with Feryal Abbasi-Ghnaim, the master traditional embroiderer and newly named national folk art fellow, to discuss her life and work. Feryal, who was born in Palestine and lives in Milwaukie, Oregon, is one of

DanceWatch Weekly: keyon gaskin’s self-portrait

“I mean that’s not really the title: I don’t really like that that gets used as the title, but the title is actually the ‘color’ lavender.” This is the Portland dance artist keyon gaskin speaking about the title of his new work,

Ryan Burghard at Pataphysical Society: Spare and liminal

By PRUDENCE ROBERTS In his latest, immersive exhibition, Whatever hour you woke, Ryan Burghard alludes to memory, to the passage of time, and to the imperfect erasures of history, using the sparest of marks and materials. The title is drawn from the

Beautiful Lives, remembered

By BONNIE MELTZER The Beautiful Lives Lost exhibition at the Art Institute of Portland during July is a tribute to honor the fifty-eight people whose lives were cut short by senseless gun violence in Las Vegas on Oct 1, 2017. Artist Quin

FilmWatch Weekly: OMSI goes avant-garde

A pair of veteran participants in Portland’s truly independent film culture will be back in action over the next couple of weeks, presenting the work of visiting artists, while another is on the verge of departing after over two decades spent laying

Waterfront Blues Festival: The End

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell How to characterize the last day of this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival? Traditionally the festival has ended with the fireworks, late night on the 4th of July, but this year we began with Wednesday, the 4th. Thursday sustained, Friday found

Waterfront Blues Festival: Day 3

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell Friday, July 6, at the Waterfront Blues Festival. This year’s third day of music reminding us how much there is to celebrate in and about the USA, dance lessons naming the African countries, the steps came

Waterfront Blues Festival: Day 2

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell The 4th of July with fireworks draws crowds big enough for the fire marshal to shut down the entrances, and that has traditionally been the last of the Waterfront Blues Festival. But this year it was

‘The Passion of Yeshua’ preview: resurrecting the Jewish Jesus

by CHRISTINA RUSNAK Richard Danielpour first heard J.S. Bach’s St. Matthew Passion at the impressionable age of 17. The experience helped to confirm for him that he was “put on this earth to write music.” Bach’s Passion planted the seed. As a young

DramaWatch Weekly: story dance

“I’ve always been interested in theater,” says Andrea Parson, “but I’ve always been on the outskirts of it, because I’m a ‘dancer,’ not an ‘actor.’” You can practically hear the air quotes as she speaks, conscious of the arts-discipline silos that so

Third Angle New Music: New directions

Third Angle New Music’s final 2017-18 season concert was titled “A Fond Farewell.” The title came from an Elliott Smith song, appropriate for a concert devoted to re-imaginings of the late Portland singer/songwriter/guitarist’s music. But it was appropriate for another reason: the

DanceWatch Weekly: Summer improvises

At the core of it all, life is really one big improvisation. I’m thinking dance improvisation, of course. Every day, in this funny, wonderful, and truly bizarre world we live in, we are presented with a variety of people and events to

Photo First: glorious blue Fourth

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell Nothing defines the best of Portland’s funk art scene like the Waterfront Blues Festival, currently in its 31st year. Aside from the mission to raise money and canned food for the Oregon Food Bank, other than

‘Romeo and Juliet,’ fresh again

ASHLAND — Romeo and Juliet must be a theater director’s greatest challenge. How does one make what is arguably the best-known play in the English language fresh and new for audiences who have probably seen or read a version or several of

Bonnie Bronson 2024 Fellow Wendy Red Star Reed College Reception Kaul Auditorium Foyer Portland Oregon
Kalakendra Indian Classical Instrumental Music First Congregational Church Portland Oregon
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
City of Hillsboro Walters Cultural Arts Center Tony Furtado Hillsboro Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Goldendale Washington
Portland State University College of the Arts
Portland Chamber Orchestra A Feast of Beethoven Kaul Auditorium Reed College Portland Oregon
PassinArt Theatre and Portland Playhouse present Yohen Brunish Theatre Portland Oregon
Golden Road Arts Grey Raven Gallery Near the Reser Beaverton Oregon
Triangle Productions presents Eleanor starring Margie Boule Portland Oregon
Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Prosperity of the Sea Lincoln County Historical Society Newport Oregon Coast
Newport Performance and Visual Arts Centers Newport Oregon Coast
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
Portland Area Theatre Alliance Fertile Ground Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
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