Portland Area Theatre Alliance Fertile Ground Portland Oregon
2019

MusicWatch Holidays: Auld lang syne

New Year’s Eve, like Death, is the great equalizer. We all celebrate the solstice-adjacent holidays differently–Christmas, Kwanzaa, Yule, Festivus, Hogswatch, and so on–but those of us who follow the Gregorian calendar all come to the end of 2019 at more or less

Sue Dixon, Portland Opera's new general director. Photo by Gia Goodrich.

Music Notes: Comings, goings, stayings

• Portland Opera has named Sue Dixon the company’s sixth general director, replacing Christopher Mattaliano, who departed in June after 16 years. She’s served the company in other capacities since 2014. PO also temporarily assigned Mattaliano’s artistic direction responsibilities to Palm Beach

A writer’s journey

In which our coast correspondent learns the secret to publishing a novel is to never, never, never give up.

Portland Sacred Harp performed shape note music in October. Photo by Daniel Heila.

Singing across the centuries

Excoriated musical Americana lives on with Portland Sacred Harp’s shape note singing convention.

Tony Starlight. Photo by Dave Degroot.

MusicWatch Holidays: Naughty and nice

Ho ho ho! Oregon First Winter is fully upon us: the snow and ice and seasonal depression haven’t hit in full force yet, but it’s finally cold and rainy enough to talk about holiday music. Let’s get started with an old favorite:

The Right Brain for learning

The revolutionary mission of an innovative program in the schools: to transform learning through the arts.

Embracing creativity

This week, singer-songwriter-composer Gabriel Kahane arrived in Portland to start his position as Creative Chair for the Oregon Symphony–a job he’ll hold for three seasons, organizing a variety of concerts and working with the beloved hometown orchestra to expand its embrace of

Memories of Michael Bowley

Artist Michael Bowley died the week before Thanksgiving. He never sought the spotlight, never showed in a commercial gallery, but Paul Sutinen remembers him vividly.

PSU Opera staged the new opera "Mirror Game." Photo by Joe Cantrell.

A game of reflections

Mirror Game, a new opera commissioned by Portland State University’s Opera program, made its world premiere Nov. 29 in PSU’s Lincoln Hall Studio Theater. The opera is an intriguing effort to bring women into the limelight in a male-dominated tech world. The

Letter From Seattle: Holiday Edition

Seattle stages offer a variety of Christmas treats, but the big gifts are Broadway-aspiring musicals such as “Shout Sister Shout!”

Hank Willis Thomas: How to unmake race

Hank Willis Thomas’s retrospective asks us to consider the mechanisms that conspired to make race so we can unmake it in the future.

Brooklyn trio Moon Hooch exhibit by Justin Hautbois. Photo courtesy of the band.

MusicWatch Semi-Monthly: Unholy daze

Bah, humbug! It’s too early for Christmas music, don’t you think? Just because December is upon us, with its flakey promises of snow, doesn’t mean there isn’t a nice pile of early unholiday presents waiting. We’ve got a good dozen or two

Left to right: James Shields, Sean Fredenburg, Sarah Tiedemann. Photo courtesy of Third Angle New Music.

The Meanings of Music, Part Three: Community grooves

Several questions haunted this journalist’s mind during a series of fall concerts put on by three of Portland’s most excellent classical groups: Fear No Music, Resonance Ensemble, and Third Angle New Music. The music was all good, but was often upstaged by

Farewell, my sweet gibassier

After 23 years the Pearl Bakery’s ovens are shutting down, and a vital slice of Portland’s culture with them.

The Meanings of Music, Part Two: Minding the beauty

Several questions haunted this journalist’s mind during a series of fall concerts put on by three of Portland’s most excellent classical groups: Fear No Music, Resonance Ensemble, and Third Angle New Music. The music was all good, but was often upstaged by

The Meanings of Music, Part One: Metabolizing Trauma

Several questions haunted this journalist’s mind during a series of fall concerts put on by three of Portland’s most excellent classical groups: Fear No Music, Resonance Ensemble, and Third Angle New Music. The music was all good, but was often upstaged by

DramaWatch: Sarah Ruhl’s Almond Joy

“Melancholy Play” is a whimsical reminder that sometimes you feel like a nut. Plus: holiday treats and Portland theater Christmas stuffing.

Close up and burning bright

Asylum Theatre reignites Lanford Wilson’s “Burn This” with intimate staging and palpable emotion.

Fernando Rodriguez submitted nine photos of anger for the Universal Feeling show. Photo by: David Bates

The medium is the mask

The Chehalem Cultural Center fills its galleries with masks by Tony Fuemmeler and other artists.

Michael Patrick Connolly and Patricia Charms in Nitemare B4 Xmas. Photo courtesy of Jason Wells.

King of the undead

Those of you who just can’t get enough Brahms and Beethoven are lucky: you get to hear those guys all the time on myriad concerts and fresh boxed sets and so on ad apparently infinitum. But if your favorite composer happens to

A soldier’s journey

Charles Burt charts a course from the rigors of military life to the rigors of an art academy.

A Tempest in the Schnitz

With a storm of Shakespeare’s words and Sibelius’s music, The Oregon Symphony pairs two twilight artists for a last hurrah.

Mario Díaz, Sarah Tiedemann, Valdine Mishkin, and Chris Whyte backstage duringThird Angle's "Homecomings" concert at New Expressive Works, October 2017. Photo by Kenton Waltz.

Composing on this side of complexity

Contemporary classical music composers–whom we might define as “those who look to the classical canon as root”–are frequently self-conscious about the historical and perennial shortcomings of modern art music (“that which seeks to transcend the history of western music”–again, my definition). Hyper

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 Area Theatre Alliance Fertile Ground Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
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