CMNW Council
cascadia composers
Philips Pavilion by Le Corbusier, Brussels, 'Expo 58.

2023 in Review: What we heard this year

A longitudinal study of everything we loved (and a few things we didn’t) in Oregon music this year, and last year, world without end, amen.

Mural from Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry in the Rivera Court, Detroit Institute of Arts.

MusicWatch Monthly: Music is work

Working hard with Renegade Opera, Jim Pepper Native Arts Festival, Cascadia Composers, Lose Yr Mind Fest, Ural Thomas, Amenta “Yawa” Abioto, and more.

MusicWatch Monthly: Becoming marble

Remembering David Bernstein, Tomáš Svoboda, and Metallica. A vinyl celebration of Roselit Bone, Spoon Benders, The Shivas, and Møtrick. Joe Kye sings about grandma.

Composer Timothy C. Takach visits Choral Arts Ensemble in 2022. Photo by Daryl Browne.

Into the light: Local choirs and living composers

In Mulieribus performs Sungji Hong, Joanne Metcalf, Steve Reich, James MacMillan and James McCarthy; Choral Arts Ensemble commissions Timothy Takach; Oregon Repertory Singers pair superstar Eric Whitacre with Ily Matthew Maniano, Ko Matsushita, and Darius Lim.

$50 million? It’s a beginning

ArtsWatch Weekly: An emergency lifeline to Oregon’s cultural sector staves off disaster. But the problem’s still urgent.

Passing the Torch

Cascadia Composers’ In Good Hands expands students’ horizons and brings music to the next generations.

Summer Streams

Chamber Music Northwest, Oregon Bach Fest lead parade of summer shows from onstage to online.

MusicWatch Weekly: The magic is in the middle

There are a handful of things that make a city’s musical culture feel complete. You need several symphony orchestras and large choirs, and they all have to be pretty damn good. You also need several smaller choral and instrumental ensembles overlapping with

Ryan Thorn as The Officer and Martin Bakari as The Visitor in Portland Opera's new production of Philip Glass's In the Penal Colony. Photo by Cory Weaver.

MusicWatch Weekly: Happy accidents

Allow me to get personal for a moment. You, my dear readers, know that I’m involved in this vibrant local music scene I’ve been writing about every week for the last three years. As a student at Portland State University, I walk

Cascadia Composers: crimes against conformity

10th anniversary season-closing concert offers clues to organization’s success by MARIA CHOBAN Guess where I am. A lemon yellow wading pool, aluminum bowls spin bump chime on its blue sparkly surface, kids clang big silver balls at them. Nope, I’m not sitting

MusicWatch Weekly: psychedeliclassical

Classical music still lags a ways behind, say, the reggae community when it comes to appropriately celebrating 4/20. Admittedly, the some of the thrill has kind of, uh, gone up in smoke since Oregon finally ended the preposterous cannabis Prohibition, but it’s

MusicWatch Weekly: spring awakenings

As 21st century America belatedly recognizes that gender isn’t always a binary phenomenon, artists have increasingly illuminated its fluid, spectral reality, as Oregonians have seen in recent Time Based Art Festival performances, last fall’s Contralto show by Third Angle, and more. Now

Choral Arts Ensemble at 50: intimacy and approachability

Interview by AARON RICHARDSON David De Lyser is artistic director of Portland’s Choral Arts Ensemble, a chamber choir now celebrating its 50th anniversary season. This weekend, CAE teams up with Cascadia Composers in a concert that includes new seasonal works by local

MusicWatch Weekly: American landscapes

Composers from around the country are commemorating the 50th anniversaries of the National Trails System Act and the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act by writing new music inspired by American landscapes. Like so many of the rest of us here in the Northwest, members of

Cascadia Composers at ten

After Dan Brugh came back from music school, whenever he’d be back on Mount Tabor, near where he grew up, “I always wanted to play music there and bring in other composers,” the Portland composer remembers. But back then, there was no

MusicWatch Weekly: voicing identity

When making the transition to align their bodily appearance with their true identities, transgender women must learn to deal with the fact that their old voices don’t transition biologically, even with hormone treatment. One of them, New York composer Sarah Hennies, turned

MusicWatch Weekly: festival season

It’s not just the thermometer that’s heating up — summer music festival season is officially underway, bringing with it music by Oregon composers. Wednesday’s Astoria Music Festival concert at Astoria’s Clatsop Community College Performing Arts Center, 588 16th Street, features a dozen

MusicWatch Weekly: a river runs through it

The biggest reasons many of us live here ultimately trace back to the rivers that course through this beautiful land. Much of Oregon’s prosperity stems from our proximity to the Columbia River and its watershed, so it’s appropriate for our artists to

MusicWatch Weekly: new sounds from Oregon

Big Horn Brass, a baker’s dozen of brass players and two percussionists, feature brassy new music by Cascadia Composers Greg Steinke, Jan Mittelstaedt, John Billota, Greg Bartholomew, and fellow Northwest composer Anthony DiLorenzo at their Saturday night concert at Beaverton’s St. Matthew Lutheran Church.

March Music Moderne preview: celebrating Debussy

While everyone is checking their brackets for one kind of March Madness (go Ducks!), some of us are equally excited by the return of another crazy rite of spring. March Music Moderne has been on hiatus for while, so it’s even more

MusicWatch Weekly: jazzing Portland

Jazz is all around Portland for the next couple weeks as PDX Jazz Festival’s 15th annual celebration commences Thursday. Angela Allen has ArtsWatch’s preview, and here’s a few recommendations among this week’s shows. But don’t stop there. With so many performances by

CMNW Council
Blueprint Arts Carmen Sandiego
Seattle Opera Barber of Seville
Stumptown Stages Legally Blonde
Corrib Hole in Ground
Kalakendra May 3
Portland Opera Puccini
Cascadia Composers May the Fourth
Portland Columbia Symphony Adelante
OCCA Monthly
NW Dance Project
Oregon Repertory Singers Finding Light
PPH Passing Strange
Maryhill Museum of Art
PSU College of the Arts
Bonnie Bronson Fellow Wendy Red Star
Pacific Maritime HC Prosperity
PAM 12 Month
High Desert Sasquatch
Oregon Cultural Trust
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