We know what you’re thinking, dear reader: “What’s the deal with all the festivals?” Maybe you even have a Jerry Seinfeld voice you use for that; maybe a gesture too, palms upturned, troubling deaf heaven, begging for an answer to life’s various imponderables.

And we do have an answer, though it’s not a very good one. Summer is the time when school’s out (cue Alice Cooper reference).

This of course is good news, not only for students and teachers but also for audiences and resort towns and tourist traps and so on. Specifically regarding music festivals, we praise them for keeping professional musicians employed during the lean months when their orchestra jobs and teaching jobs dry up at the same time. And that’s an unalloyed good; that’s good for everyone. I mean, can you imagine (just to choose one example more or less at random) local viola hero Charles Noble having to spend his summer months tending bar, cooking pizzas, washing dishes, driving for Über?

The good news is that, now, going into August, with Chamber Music Northwest and Oregon Bach Festival behind us, we still have several solid summer music festivals to look forward to. Bonus: they’re almost all outside of the Portland metro area.

Fear no (local) music

Before we get into all that, though, we need to share some important news about the upcoming classical season. Fear No Music has done what literally every other “classical” organization in Oregon (except Cascadia Composers) has found impossible: They’re doing a whole season of music by Oregon composers. Here’s what FNM Artistic Director Kenji Bunch had to say about it in a recent email:

Eleven years ago, when I began my role as Artistic Director, I started an annual tradition of dedicating one concert every season to the music of composers from our community here in the Pacific Northwest. In concert with the famous farm to table ethos of the Willamette Valley, we called it Locally Sourced Sounds.

In our 2024-25 season, we will double down on this idea and present an ENTIRE SEASON of music by the composers living among us. This year, Locally Sourced Sounds goes live in September and will continue throughout the season, with works by composers spanning several generations and reflecting the diverse experiences of our region. We celebrate longtime Portland artists David Schiff and Bonnie Miksch, exciting new neighbors Caroline Shaw and Andy Akiho, intriguing innovations in electro-acoustic music including works by Kirsten Volness and Todd Barton, and a special collaboration with Native American musician, educator, and activist Jan Michael Looking Wolf.

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Yowza! That’s a whole lot of Oregrown classical music. We’ve always had a special love for FNM — those Locally Sourced Sounds concerts are invariably a blast, and the group also has the distinction of being one of the only organizations in Oregon to have commissioned and recorded a whole album of music by a local composer (that would be Dr. Miksch, and you can read about their collaboration in Brett Campbell’s profile right here). A few years ago the group gave a repeat performance of the last movement of the album’s title piece, “In a field of golden light,” at Joel Bluestone’s retirement concert — one of the first concerts I reviewed for this publication and still one of my favorites. But the album itself, Somewhere I have never traveled, hovers in a limbo of vague unavailability, and we certainly hope that gets resolved this year.

While you wait for that reissue, though, you can watch FNM performing the whole thing yet again at their 2021 ReTurn concert:

The first concert of the upcoming all-local season already has a date and venue — and, shockingly, it’s not a Monday at The Old Church, where FNM has been doing its thing for years. No, the season opener is on Friday, September 27, at Reed College’s Eliot Chapel. The program looks to include the composers mentioned above: Miksch, Schiff, Shaw, Akiho, Volness, Barton, and Looking Wolf.

Here’s a little breakdown of who these people are:

• Miksch, whom we’ve already mentioned, is director of Portland State University’s School of Music & Theater. She’s a singer and electroacoustician with a keen ear for the messy, sensual area where progress and technology meet beauty and humanity. Here she is singing her “Allow my heart to ache” at a Cascadia Composers concert in 2015:

• Schiff is a retired Reed College professor with several published books to his name on topics ranging from Duke Ellington to Elliott Carter, which should tell you quite a bit about what his music is all about. He had two major Oregon premieres a couple summers back, which you can read about here and here and here. You can hear the 2007 iteration of Third Angle New Music performing his opera Gimpel the Fool here on Spotify, and you can watch violinist Regina Carter and Metropolitan Youth Symphony performing the third movement of his concerto 4 Sisters in 2020 right here:

• Shaw and Akiho hardly need introductions; our most recent interviews with them are here and here. But just for fun, here’s Shaw and Danni Lee (aka Ringdown) with Sō Percussion performing “The Parting Glass” off their stellar new album Rectangles and Circumstance:

• And here’s Akiho doing what Akiho does best, banging intently on a giant metal sculpture of a human head:

• Kirsten Volness is perhaps less well-known, although that is surely a temporary condition. A few years back we interviewed Volness about her album River Rising, which you can read about here and listen to here. Last year’s Makrokosmos Project IX took its subtitle from a piece they commissioned from Volness, Ghosts of Cascadia. You can read about that here and watch it right here:

• And then there’s Todd Barton. Sonic adventurer. Composer-in-residence for Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Buchla synth enthusiast and teacher. Collaborator with Ursula K. Le Guin, whom you may have heard of in her capacity as Greatest Oregon Author of All Time. You can read a bit about those collaborations here and here, and you can listen to the music Barton created for LeGuin’s bizarre novel Always Coming Home right here:

• Jan Michael Looking Wolf is kind of a trippy and contrarian addition to the roster, in the sense that he’s a “folk singer” and not a “classical musician,” but this is another of those nice FNM touches: Where everybody else does those limp land acknowledgement things, these folks have actually gone out and hired an enrolled Kalapuya Tribal Elder of the Confederated Tribes of Grand Ronde to perform his music on a classical concert right alongside the rest of the fancy composers. It’s the sort of thing Resonance Ensemble would do. It might have been Carlos Fuentes who said, “We care more about the dead Indian in the museum than we do the living Indian on the street” — whoever said it, though, it’s certainly one of the ugly truths most of us fear too much to face. You can hear JMLW with his band Native Rose right here:

Have we said “yowza” already? I mean come on, the rest of Oregon! This is how it’s done! More to come on FNM’s fearless season as it draws closer.

Alright, alright, on with the festivals already

At various wineries around the rich and fertile Willamette Valley, the aptly named Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival starts this weekend. As usual, they’re pairing various of the best Dead White European Males — this year it’s Beethoven, Haydn, Ravel, and Schubert (the, ahem, cream of the crop) — alongside music by Baroque composer Isabella Leonarda and new work by Los Angeles composer Akshaya Tucker and Boston gamelan enthusiast Christine Southworth and this year’s WVCMF composer-in-residence, San Diegan Kevin Day. Before we move on to Day, let’s hear Southworth doing her thing with Kronos Quartet and Gamelan Elektrika:

So. Kevin Day. Fine composer. Future Pulitzer winner, probably. As long as we’re bringing in composers from the Vaunted Bastions of Elsewhere — as WVCMF does every year, along with CMNW and OBF and Third Angle New Music and Oregon Symphony and, well, pretty much everybody else (except Fear No Music (and Cascadia Composers)) — you can do a lot worse than Day.

You can get a sense of his vibe with Portland’s David Douglas High School performing his Requiem for the Unarmed right here:

This weekend’s opening concerts feature the bulk of the festival’s variety. The program this Saturday and Sunday, August 3 & 4, at Sokol Blosser Winery near Dayton features Leonarda (Sonata, Op. 16, No. 5); Tucker (In Whose Mouth, The Stars); Haydn (String Quartet in D Major, Op. 64, No. 5 “The Lark”); Beethoven (String Quartet in A Major, Op.18, No.5); and a bit of Day (his Variation V, inspired by the same Beethoven quartet).

Week two, August 10 & 11 at J. Christopher Wines in Newberg, features Ravel’s oh-so-perfect String Quartet in F Major (the one from The Royal Tenenbaums) alongside three from Day: Birds in the Cathedral, Transit, and his arrangement of Piazzolla’s Oblivion. Week three, August 17 & 18 at Archery Summit Wines in Dayton, it’s Schubert’s perfect String Quartet No. 13 in A Minor, D. 804 “Rosamunde,” Southworth’s bee-utiful Honey Flyers, and Day’s fifth quartet The Essence of Being.

Byrd watching

In her preview of this month’s William Byrd Festival, Daryl Browne had this to say:

Let us not take this “homegrown” Festival for granted. It is unique, especially in the choral world. Sure, several other annual Festivals around the country zero in on one composer; there are a couple of Bach celebrations around the nation, like our very own Oregon Bach Festival. Mozart and Beethoven also get plenty of attention. And there are numerous general classical music Festivals — Spoleto, Aspen, Newport, Tanglewood to name a few — who boast of world-class orchestras. But other than our own OBF, and to a lesser degree the Boston Early Music Festival, choral works and performances are not a primary focus. Hats off to our WBF and its founders and sustainers. For two weeks each August in Portland not only is choral music a star but the singers are our own excellent pool of choral musicians. This Festival is a jewel.

There’s a ton of music at this year’s WBF, some by Byrd and some by composers who’ve been influenced by him one way or another. Three pieces stand out to this writer: Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb, John Taverner’s Song for Athene, and Ross Duffin’s restructured Arcadia. Daryl again:

What Duffin has done to breathe new life into an historic work, Arcadia, by Elizabethan poet Philip Sidney, is fascinating. Sidney died at the age of 31, leaving dozens of “songs” musically unset. William Byrd had set two of Sidney’s earlier poems to music and composed two elegies at his passing. Now Duffin has reunited the two geniuses with a “reconstruction of songs in Arcadia, enchanting its lyrics with music by Byrd” (media notes from Ross Duffin). You will hear Williams at the keyboard with soloists Michael Hilton, Benjamin España, Chris Engbretson, Kerry McCarthy and Vakarė Petroliūnaitė.

But some of the texts take a broader approach to spiritualism; some metaphysical poetry has been set as well. In Benjamin Britten’s Rejoice in the Lamb you’ll hear the eccentric ramblings of 18th century poet Christopher Smart, who envisioned God in natural earth wonders, saying, for example:

For I am possessed of a cat,
Surpassing beauty,
From whom I take occasion
To bless Almighty God.
(from Jubilate Agno, 1759-1763)

Smart, who wrote the poem while confined in a mental institution, also muses on the mouse, on flowers, and rhapsodizes on various instruments of the orchestra and other things that take him closer to God. Church music? Hmmm.

John Taverner’s Song for Athene can be appreciated in or out of a church settings and was a universal reminder of the preciousness of life in the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales. Listen to it here:

But if it is a liturgical setting you enjoy or wish to experience for the first time, this is a Festival for you. One of the bold things about the WBF is their dedication to preservation of not only the music but the manner in which it was meant to be heard – in service. Church music? Indeed it is. But your personal WBF experience can be beyond belief or within it.

‘Nuff said!

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Meanwhile, over the mountains and through the woods, it’s the Sunriver Music Festival in and around Bend. Seven concerts spread across August 10-23 feature conductor Brett Mitchell and the Festival Orchestra performing Beethoven (Symphony No. 6, “Pastoral”), Handel (Water Music Suite), Schumann (Symphony No. 3, “Rheinish”), Haydn (Symphony No. 59, “Fire”), Mozart (Symphony No. 41, “Jupiter”), Gershwin (Rhapsody in Blue, featuring pianist Orion Weiss), and a whole lot more. There’s a Pops concert, a “Discover the Symphony” concert, and a violin recital with Tessa Lark.

Now, here’s where we’re supposed to once again bemoan the lack of Oregon composers. But who can complain about a lineup like that? It’s a perfect spread of classics, the really worthwhile stuff, all organized around an Elemental theme (did you notice that?) and performed by top-notch musicians in a lovely resort town where you can also go hiking, or rafting, or whatever your intrepid heart desires.

Oh and here’s Mitchell doing his “piano cover with film” thing to the greatest science fiction movie of all time:

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We leave you with a refreshing trip to the glorious Oregon Coast and the annual Siletz Bay Music Festival. This year’s festival — the first without dearly departed director Yaacov “Yaki” Bergman, the first under the directorship of pianist Mei-Ting Sun — features the usual assortment of daring-but-also-comfortable musical selections. You get Beethoven, Brahms, and Beach (of course); you get Mendelssohn, Messiaen, and Mozart; you even get some Poulenc and some Sibelius. You also get Nancy Ives, Daniel Freiberg, Mary Kouyoumdjian, and Jerod Impichchaachaaha’ Tate.

Let’s zero in on some of those. The opening concert on August 16 features Sun playing two Beethoven sonatas (Op. 110 and 111) and his own arrangement (for piano, four hands, with Michelle Chow) of the Sibelius Fifth Symphony. The free “Musical Feast” on August 20 features the Brahms Sextet in G Major and Messiaen’s startlingly gorgeous Quartet for the End of Time, which you must hear in live performance once per incarnation. Clarinetist Ricky Smith takes the lead on that one.

On August 21, modern flutist extraordinaire Amelia Lukas performs the Poulenc Sonata for Flute and Piano (with Chow), and violist Miriam English Ward joins wunderkind pianist Michelle Bushkova for Kouyoumjian’s Boy with a Makeshift Toy. Another free concert August 24 features Tate’s Spirit Chief Names the Animal People, with bassoonist Ryan Hare and narrator Sherrie Davis joining Bushkova, Lukas, and Smith. Here’s that one in an orchestral arrangement:

The festival closes August 25 with “Sounds of the Americas,” conducted by Oregon Symphony Associate Conductor Deanna Tham. That one opens with Gabriella Smith’s Rust; moves on to Daniel Freiberg’s Jazz Clarinet Concerto “Latin American Chronicles” (with clarinetist Paquito D’Rivera, Portland Percussion Group’s Brett EE Paschal on percussion, and Freiberg himself on piano); and concludes with Ives’ Celilo Falls: We Were There.

Now, about that last one. We’ve been tracking this composer, and this composition, for years now. It was commissioned and premiered by Portland Chamber Orchestra (under the direction of “Yaki”), and at the time we had this and this to say about it. In her review of the 2022 premiere, Angela Allen discussed the work’s background, and its connection to Siletz Bay Music Festival:

This three-year Portland Chamber Orchestra collaboration was sparked by a conversation at the 2019 Siletz Bay Music Festival. The animated discussion included composer/Oregon Symphony and Cello Project cellist Nancy Ives, poet/storyteller/consultant/tour guide Ed Edmo, photographer Joe Cantrell and PCO director Yaacov Bergman. Edmo and Cantrell have Native bloodlines, and Ives has said the mid-century flooding of the Columbia River’s Celilo Falls that decimated Native fishing grounds was not her story to tell, being without a drop of Native blood.

Still, Ives wrote in an email that though she is descended from “four generations of colonizers,” the project gave her a chance to “literally amplify the voices of two amazing Indigenous artists (Edmo is Shoshone-Bannock and Cantrell has Cherokee heritage) by creating an orchestral setting for their work, and in the process, brought out the best in me.”

You can get a taste of what it sounded and looked like in this trailer:

The really good news? If you can’t make it out to Lincoln City this month, you can hear this one next June when Oregon Symphony performs it.

Toodeloo for now, O Oregon! Stay safe, stay cool, and remember to always burn your garbage only in approved dumpsters.