High Desert Museum Creations of Spirit Bend Oregon
Daniel Heila
Daniel Heila
Daniel Heila
Daniel Heila is a composer, flutist, and video artist whose work embraces electroacoustic sound design and projected video as well as traditional format composition, moving image art, sound art, and installation. His efforts are largely in response to memory, the mundane, and the witnessing of environment. In the past, his creativity has been intimately entwined with the ebb and flow of domesticity. As composer, Heila has largely been a student of the American experimental tradition from Ives and Cowell to Cage, Nancorrow, Feldman and beyond to minimalism, postminimalism, and postmodernism. He has also been a composer/performer of rock and folk music as well as free improvisation. His music achieves a balance of realism and abstraction, consonance and dissonance that honors these varied influences.
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

The music of our time?

A Delgani String Quartet concert featuring living local composers raises questions of tradition and timeliness.

Radiance Orb

A synergistic triumph of wills

The five Eugene Symphony concerts I attended in the first half of this year (I was unable to attend the all twentieth-century music Valentine’s Day concert) were of such diverse programming that it is hard to ally them all with one unifying

Sver: epic Nordic folk music

In the front row of Corvallis’s Majestic Theater a flock of fidgety youths — a posse of sjörå on shore leave — hoot and whistle as the string-driven, Swedish rhythm machine Sver cranks out a rousing set of relentless syncopated hooks, exhilarating

Eugene Symphony: earning attention

After the Eugene Symphony’s 2018-19 season opener, high like only a classical music geek can be and thoroughly lit by a stunning performance of Shostakovich’s fifth symphony, I wandered around the Hult Center’s cathedral-like atrium. Eventually, I paused in front of a

Jennifer Higdon: updating classical music

In 2011, National Public Radio asked Pulitzer Prize winning American composer Jennifer Higdon where classical music was headed in the 21st century. In distinct contrast to her generally open-hearted music, Higdon’s answer seemed pessimistic: it almost implied that classical music might be

Jazz Station: musical hub

Recently, Ted Ledgard, president of the Jazz Station in Eugene, was catching a show at a jazz venue in the Lower East Side of Manhattan when he got to talking with one of the patrons of the club. He asked Ledgard where he

Checking the Percussive Pulse of Eugene

Story and photos by DANIEL HEILA Percussion music and world music rose to prominence in America around the same time at the end of the last century. Recent concerts by the Eugene-based Beta Percussion International Institute (featured in this article by Gary

Noise Fest 2018 preview: art of noise

Wherever we are, what we hear is mostly noise. When we ignore it, it disturbs us. When we listen to it, we find it fascinating. — John Cage. On Saturday, Eugene’s WOW Hall will tremble, throb, and reverberate with the tweeter-searing, woofer-warping

Aallotar review: collaboration, commitment, courage

At Aallotar’s July 29 concert at the beautifully austere Nordia House, the Finland/Minnesota duo played with an intensely graceful stage presence against a lovely backdrop, through plate glass windows, of the Nordic culture center’s patio garden. There and at the band’s next show

Blueprint Choirs Gala and Grand Concert Lloyd Center Portland Oregon
Hallie Ford Museum of Art Willamette University Tom Prochaska Music for Ghosts Salem Oregon
Portland State University College of the Arts
Cascadia Composers A Ligeti Odyssey The Old Madeleine Church Portland Oregon
Lincoln County Historical Society Pacific Maritime Heritage Center The Curious World of Seaweed Newport Oregon
Portland Playhouse The sounds of Afrolitical Movement Portland Oregon
Oregon Bach Festival Musical Wanderlust Eugene Oregon
High Desert Museum Creations of Spirit Bend Oregon
Triangle Productions The Inheritance Part 2 Portland Oregon
Profile Theatre How To Make An American Son Imago Theatre Portland Oregon
Portland Piano International Alexander Korsantia Portland Oregon
Portland Revels Rancho Trinidad Portland Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Columbia Gorge Washington
Oregon Bach Festival Musical Wanderlust Eugene Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Stravinsky Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust tax credit donate
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