Charles Rose

Charles Rose is a composer, writer and sound engineer born and raised in Portland, Oregon. In 2023 he received a masters degree in music from Portland State University. During his tenure there he served as the school's theory and musicology graduate teaching assistant and the lead editor of the student-run journal Subito. His piano trio Contradanza was the 2018 winner of the Chamber Music Northwest’s Young Composers Competition. He also releases music on BandCamp under various aliases. You can find his writing at CharlesRoseMusic.com.

Sitting in a moment: Introducing Raindrop New Music

January 22, 2025Charles Rose

The composer collective–Lisa Neher, Carolyn Quick and Drew Swatosh–will be featured on Fear No Music’s next “Locally Sourced Sounds” concerts this weekend.

What makes a school: 45th Parallel Universe’s “Portland School of Music” concert

December 18, 2024Charles Rose

Do the five composers on 45||’s recent Pyxis Quartet concert – Kenji Bunch, Kirsten Volness, Gabriel Kahane, Darrell Grant, and Caroline Shaw – represent a school of music or just a group of musicians who live in Portland?

Painting on the edge of a cliff: Inside Bill Oskay’s Big Red Studio

December 11, 2024Charles Rose

The struggles of this pastoral, vintage-friendly, talismanic Oregon recording studio highlight the shifting tastes and priorities of musicians, audiences and the industry at large.

Between the tragic and comic: New Wave Opera’s “Night of the Living Opera”

November 27, 2024Charles Rose

The chamber opera ensemble haunted Raven’s Manor with operas by Lisa Neher and Kimberly Osberg.

The finite nature of earthly things: 45th Parallel Universe performs Mahler’s “Das Lied von der Erde”

November 18, 2024Charles Rose

45|| with conductor Raúl Gómez-Rojas and soloists Abbe Drake and Katherine Goforth performed Schoenberg’s chamber arrangement of the song cycle in October.

Pages upon pages of whole notes: An in-depth conversation with composer Ryan Francis

November 10, 2024Charles Rose

The Oregon composer discusses his piece “Voynich Transcriptions” (performed at this week’s Fear No Music concert), his early attachment to piano and electronics, and why he doesn’t think music is an art.

The breath is integral and unforced: Deena T. Grossman at Congregation Beth Israel and on record

September 25, 2024Charles Rose

A half-concert half-album review of the Oregon composer’s work.

Funny and less serious: New Wave Opera at Raven’s Manor

September 17, 2024Charles Rose

The good NWO–started this year by Lisa Neher, Lindsey Rae Johnson, and Kimberly Osberg–brought music by Neher, Osberg, Dianne Davies, and more to the gothy Portland bar in August.

Music is music, you can’t be too precious about it: Chamber Music Northwest’s New@Night series featuring Caroline Shaw, Kyle Rivera and Jörg Widmann

August 27, 2024Charles Rose

CMNW 2024’s new music series spotlighted living composers with fine performances and pre-concert talks with the composers.

Aufführungspraxis: Makrokosmos Project turns X

July 20, 2024Charles Rose

The one-day modernist music festival continues to justify the words of George Crumb, performing music that “depends for its very existence on a type of pioneer performer” by Juri Seo, Steve Reich, Terry Longshore, and Crumb’s “Makrokosmos” in its four-part entirety.

45th Parallel Universe: Lost in Deep Time

May 15, 2024Charles Rose

With great music and visuals and a fantastic performance, a warehouse concert creates an artistic evocation of vast geological disruptions and troubling environmental times.

“Just going over home”: Delgani String Quartet with Kenji Bunch

March 21, 2024Charles Rose

The Eugene-based quartet partners with the violist-composer-polymath for a week of shows featuring “our Oregonian superstar” alongside Haydn and Brahms.

Ultimately it’s all music: Alex Ross with 45th Parallel Universe

February 12, 2024Charles Rose

The popular music critic joined up with the classical chamber collective for an evening of readings and live musical examples.

The seeming darkness from which we emerge: Sarah Tiedemann’s ‘Atmospheres’ concert with Third Angle New Music

February 2, 2024Charles Rose

The 3A artistic director’s solo flute show featured new music–including commissioned works by two Oregon composers–and a multimedia aura of spiritual mystery.

Spontaneity and improvisation: 45 Parallel’s Holiday Pub Crawl featured a pair of singer-songwriters, a jazz trio, klezmer violin and clarinets, a cello sextet, and a warning from the fire marshall

January 9, 2024Charles Rose

45||’s four-venue evening sprawled across Mississippi Avenue in North Portland, featuring: singer-songwriters Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk; clarinetists James Shields, Mark Dubac, and new executive director Lisa Lipton, plus violinist and outgoing ED Ron Blessinger; the all-star jazz trio of John Nastos, Clay Giberson, and Christopher Brown; the North Pole Cello Sextet; and some fancy footwork.

A kind of shelter: Renegade Opera’s ‘American Patriots’ and ‘She Loves You Back’

December 19, 2023Charles Rose

The local opera company’s Artists in Conversation Festival featured Samantha Rose Williams’ interview-based staged song cycle and music by Oregon composer Lisa Neher.

Audiophiles and music nerds: Third Angle New Music’s Decibel Series

November 21, 2023Charles Rose

Final three shows of 3A’s intimate series featured performances by Branic Howard, Yawa, and Methods Body.

A musical melting pot: Minimalism and the Oregon Symphony

October 25, 2023Charles Rose

The latest of OSO Creative Chair Gabriel Kahane’s Open Music Series concerts featured music by Kahane, Sam Adams, Andy Akiho, Julius Eastman, Reena Esmail, Meredith Monk, Steve Reich, and Julia Wolfe.

‘To build something, you have to knock something down’: Jennifer Wright’s ‘Body/Language’

October 12, 2023Charles Rose

The local composer assembled a cast of artists and musicians for an environmentally conscious arts and culture festival.

Language beneath language: Ling Ling Huang with Third Angle New Music

October 2, 2023Charles Rose

The author and violinist discussed and demonstrated literature and music at the latest of 3A’s Listening Labs.

Love, relationships and community: Emily Lau, Big Mouth Society and ‘The Common Opus’

September 20, 2023Charles Rose

Tackling apocalypse and perseverance with the local consort of professional and amateur musicians.

What we keep, what we leave behind: Protégés unite at the final New@Night of CMNW 2023

August 9, 2023Charles Rose

The fourth in the festival’s new music series featured new-but-not-too-new music by Alistair Coleman, Aiden Kane and Kian Ravaei, performed by the Viano Quartet.

An urban oasis: Deena T. Grossman at Leach Botanical Gardens

July 30, 2023Charles Rose

Six flutists performed music by the esteemed Oregon composer.

Twitchy energy: New@Night number three

July 25, 2023Charles Rose

Last Wednesday’s concert in the Armory–the second-to-last in Chamber Music Northwest’s series of midweek new music programs–presented young-people-friendly music by Magnus Lindberg, Patrick Castillo, Lembit Beecher, and Edvard Bagdasaryan.

Our life, our breath, our hopes and dreams: Makrokosmos IX

July 12, 2023Charles Rose

The ninth annual day-long new music festival at PICA featured music by Crumb and Takemitsu alongside a clutch of Pacific Northwest composers that included Adams, Bunch, Johanson, Miksch, Svoboda, and Volness.

Fluid harmonies: New@Night, week one

July 7, 2023Charles Rose

The first of CMNW’s Wednesday night new music concerts brought composer trio umama womama to Alberta Rose Theatre.

No one’s experience is the same: New Music Gathering 2023 from the inside

July 5, 2023Charles Rose

A report from within the one-day festival of new music, hosted this year at Portland State University.

MusicWatch Monthly: Out with the new, in with the new

April 5, 2023Charles Rose

New music, new music, and other new music. Also: old music.

MusicWatch Monthly: Resolving from overexposure to relaxation

January 2, 2023Charles Rose

January brings a city-wide music festival, Fear No Music’s “Generations,” a PJCE celebration of women in jazz, and more.

MusicWatch Monthly: Christmas versus Christmas

December 1, 2022Charles Rose

In which we discuss holiday traditions new and old.