Happy New Year!

Weird thing about celebrating, or at least commemorating, the new year right in the middle of winter. It’s not the solstice, it’s not Christmas; neither do we celebrate the new year on or near the first day of spring, as the ancient Romans did (though it is also the Romans who give us Janus). It’s like a lot of state borders. Some borders line up with where the big cities are, the Portland-Vancouver Greater Metro Area sprawling across the Oregon-Washington border in just such a way. But head on out to where Oregon meets up with the northwest corner of Nevada and the southwest corner of Idaho and you’ll see what I mean: It’s no man’s land out there, a wilderness in the middle of nowhere. This “January 1” business is like that.

We’ve already bemoaned and lamented last year, so let’s close the eyes on our rearward Janus face and look forward. Hey, Mr. Grumpy Gills, when life gets you down, you know what you gotta do? Just keep swimming!

Let’s think about how we’re going to spend the year ahead. What sounds good? Here’s one music lover’s personal journey: Last year I went to about fifteen concerts (most of them at Siletz Bay Music Festival) and a dozen or so recitals (all at Oregon Bach Festival Composer Symposium), and I kicked it all off with a lovely hometown symphony concert last spring, which I attended with an old college friend in the medium-small city in Northern California where we learned first-year music theory together (hi Travis!)

Fifteenish is a fairly low number, at least for a devoted classical lover and music journalist, way down from the pre-pandemic peak – but it’s way up from the last few years. In 2024 I went to exactly one concert (this one). The last one before that was in 2020 (this one). In between, nothing. I wrote about all of that at the time, chiefly here and here. Let’s move on. Just keep swimming!

Being important

Last week, last year, I referred to the Portland-based chamber classical group ChatterPDX as “the most important classical music organization in Oregon.” And yeah, I meant that, but here in 2026 I want to clarify that what they really are is tied for first: tied with 45th Parallel Universe, Cascadia Composers, Delgani String Quartet, Fear No Music, In Mulieribus, New Wave Opera, Renegade Opera, Resonance Ensemble, Third Angle New Music, and probably a few others whom I’ve forgotten and who will perhaps be patient and kind when they write their disappointed emails to matthew@orartswatch.org.

Yes, this list is in alphabetical order. And yes, we could expand that list to include literally everyone – A Notion, A Scream, Cappella Romana, Bach Cantata Choir, Eugene Symphony, Oregon Mozart Players, Oregon Mandolin Orchestra, OrpheusPDX, Portland Opera, yadda yadda yadda ad infinitum – but, to quote another Pixar classic, “if everyone’s super then no one is.”

So. Chatter. Nevermind the hyperbole and the goldtrophyism, let’s simply consider why they’re important. Start with this picture:

That’s Oregon composer Kimberly Osberg, introducing her new work for clarinet and string quartet Conversations, composed for and premiered by ChatterPDX last month (read Charles Rose’s report on that concert right here). Osberg is one of three composers-in-residence participating in Chatter’s unique residency program (we discussed all this last month). Two things in particular stood out about this specific picture. One is the simple confirmation of something I’d already heard from several sources regarding Chatter, that their audiences are large and robust. The second is the photographer credit: Bill Campbell.

Mr. Campbell (no relation to ArtsWatch senior editor Brett Campbell, as far as we know, except perhaps in the “we’re all related” sense) is a composer too, in fact he’s the chair of Linfield University’s music department and director of composition studies there. You’ve encountered him here before. In 2024, shortly after arriving at Linfield, he was involved in Resonance Ensemble’s mentorship residency (read about that here). Last year, he headed up a film-scoring program at Linfield (read about that here). Also last year, he made an appearance on one of FNM’s all-Oregon season concerts (read about that here).

Here he is at that FNM concert (last one on the right, your right that is):

And here’s what his music sounds like:

I asked Kim to confirm that it’s the same Bill Campbell (and not, idk, Billy Shears or something) and she had this to say:

Yes! There were actually a number of composers who showed up for the premiere, which was very kind. Bill, Bora Yoon, Charles, Cecille Elliott, Drew Swatosh, Joe Hay, Obadiah Wright, Lisa Neher, and Nancy Ives are the ones I can remember who were there off the top of my head. The composers in this town are so supportive of each other – it’s a great place to be a creative!

Sponsor

Which reminded me of something composer, violist, and FNM artistic director Kenji Bunch said awhile back, in connection with that all-Oregon season:

Our idea was to present an entire season of what we call Locally Sourced Sounds, what had been in the past one concert in our series devoted to music by composers working locally. And what we didn’t really anticipate was the incredible feeling of community that started to happen at these concerts. But of course it made sense – the composers came and they all brought their folks and it was just really neat to have them meet and talk with each other and connect people with each other. It felt like we were really building community. And in the end, isn’t that what we’re trying to do here?

Returning to Chatter, the thing then that makes them important is – well, let’s put it in list format.

1. They perform every damn week, same time, same day, same place;
2. Which helps ensure a large, diverse audience of regulars (many of whom, I’m informed, are traveling en masse from nearby retirement communities);
3. They’re not afraid of the whole array of classics, the Bachs and Beethovens and Haydns and Mozarts;
4. And they’re also not afraid of The New Stuff, the Shosties and the Berios and the Cages and the Adamses;
5. And they’re especially not afraid to perform and even commission the living composers who dwell among them, not hipster Brooklyn types they read about in the New York Times or whatever but people they know personally, people they have backyard barbecues with, people they might see reading on the Max or buying heirloom tomatoes down at the farmer’s market;
6. Two of whom also do administrative work for ChatterPDX: Osberg herself and co-artistic director (and clarinetist and composer) James Shields.

It’s easy enough to understand why everybody else, meaning the other classical orgs we mentioned earlier, doesn’t do things this way. It’s hard enough producing a few concerts every season, let alone trying to do it Every Damn Week. But I urge these other orgs and their leaders – I urge you, dear reader, because I know you’re among them – to think hard about this, about whether your audience looks like Chatter’s, and why not.

There’s a line from Mr. Shields in Alice Hardesty’s recent profile which provides a hint. He’s talking about chamber music and says this: “It’s a lot easier to be spontaneous as a performer when there are only 2 to 8 of you than when there are 100 of you.” That goes for the planning as much as it does for the execution, the administrative as well as the artistic aspects. And, in the same interview, this bit regarding 45|| (with whom he also plays clarinets): “45th Parallel is a great model. It is a democratically run organization, in particular with programming, and it’s made up of constituent ensembles that come together to put on larger shows, like a chamber orchestra. We program everything together as a group, and we run stuff by each other. I think almost everybody is a member of the Oregon Symphony so you know the quality is going to be high.”

According to legend, famed music engineer Glyn Johns once said this about John Bonham and how they got that famous Led Zeppelin drum sound: “It’s simple. We just put a handful of expensive mics on an expensive drum set and got the greatest drummer in the world to play it.” By which we mean this: when you gather up a few dozen of the best symphonic musicians in Oregon and ask them to play Mozart and Beethoven and a few Oregon composers every week, you’re not just building an audience for yourself – you’re building a community.

ChatterPDX performs at 10:30, every Sunday morning, at Pacific Center in Downtown Portland. Next up is violinist and author Anthea Kreston, discussing her upcoming book “Crescendo – A Memoir of an Adventurous Life in Music” and performing the music of Mark O’Connor, J.S. Bach, Eugène Ysaÿe, Kenji Bunch, and Franz Schubert. Subsequent concerts feature the music of Mozart, John Cage, John Luther Adams, and plenty more. Complete listings are available right here.

Our mandate, revisited

Let’s talk a bit more about that community. Our specific mandate here in the Oregon ArtsWatch Music Section (it helps to clarify this and be explicit about it every now and then) is to explore the music of Oregon. Seems simple enough, right? Yet there’s always that weird network of cultural ley lines connecting these myriad nodes of Oregon music, and it’s not always clear where lies the exact distinction between “music in Oregon” and “music of Oregon.” Consider a touring band who makes a stop here – let’s say for the sake of argument that we’re specifically thinking of the Japanese metal band Boris, who took their name from a song by the PNW power trio Melvins and performed last month at Revolution Hall. Is that “music of Oregon” or simply “music in Oregon” or what? Certainly it’s not as “music of Oregon” as the legendary Eugene doom metal band YOB playing a sold out show at the same venue a few weeks later. Same goes, mutatis mutandis, for an orchestra or an opera company or a string quartet or a pianist performing one of those hipster Brooklynite composers. Oregon musicians, but not always Oregon music.

To make things easier on ourselves here – to make a map instead of drowning in territory – we generally prefer to write about two broad categories of Oregonian music-making. First is the Oregon School of Composition, the loose and vast collection of classical composers who live, move, and have their being in this fair state of cloud banks and evergreens. That’s where we find Osberg, Shields, Williams, et alia. Surrounding this School are the organizations who go out of their way to perform their works, groups like Chatter and FNM and Resonance and so on.

The second category is the even looser, even vaster collection of musical groupings which we usually call “bands,” who perform in the wide variety of genres and subgenres we concatenate under the heading “pop music.” Popular and classical, Dionysius and Apollo, the ever-duelling twin engines of culture, expressed in – actually let’s get all theological and say “hypostasized as” – cloud banks and evergreens.

I do in fact want to talk to you about a handful of live music events which hypostasize the Oregon Sound for you this month. These are things you can leave your house for, things that I can personally recommend as A Good Time in Oregon. They’re all more-or-less on the classical side, and they’re also all in Portland, which in a way sucks for me since I don’t live in Portland, but I also don’t particularly care that much since I don’t really enjoy going out to concerts anymore (this is where we came in). But if you’re in or near Portland, you can check out any one of these and have a good time with music in Oregon.

Echoing locations

First up is New Wave Opera, one of several small opera companies operating in Rip City. It also happens to be co-headed by one of the Oregon composers Kim mentioned earlier, Lisa Neher (read our most recent profile of Neher right here). NWO’s gearing up for a multi-phase project involving yet another Oregon composer, Caroline Louise Miller, whose “queer fantasy opera” Dark Water is in development and will be premiered by NWO this summer. You can preview that on January 16 at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, with NWO’s “Currents of Change” concert.

Here’s what they have to say about it:

New Wave Opera presents Currents of Change, an examination of our warming world through opera, in collaboration with Portland State University’s Music @ Midday concert series. This free lunchtime concert features exclusive previews of Portland composer Caroline Louise Miller’s opera “Deep Water,” which NWO will premiere in June 2026. “Deep Water” is a post-apocalyptic fantasy opera that investigates rage, grief, play, & persistence in the face of gargantuan, destructive forces. Queer teenage companions Val & Bluejay chronicle the fall of humanity during the Anthropocene, acting as witnesses and documentarians and finding resilience through love and play. “Deep Water” positions 2 queer teenagers in the role of history-creation, defining what is worth preserving.

Miller says about the upcoming performance: “In writing ‘Deep Water,’ I am continually inspired by the vast complexities of human experience, exploring entanglements of climate grief with the need for love, levity and play. In this upcoming performance, I am especially excited to share the excerpt ‘Immortality Becomes Tedious,’ in which Val and Bluejay reminisce and lament on the difficulty of remaining the same over centuries while the earth experiences devastating changes.”

Complementing selections from “Deep Water” are excerpts of modern operas and art songs by living composers about the climate crisis, including songs from Portland composer Drew Swatosh’s “Dead Fires Anthology” and NWO President Lisa Neher’s major song cycles about climate change “No One Saves the Earth from Us But Us” and “Love in a Time of Climate Change” (commissioned by Oregon Music Teachers Association for their 2025 Composer of the Year Award). “The performing arts play a crucial role in confronting the climate crisis,” says NWO President Lisa Neher. “Statistics and daily obligations can overwhelm and distract us, but the arts bring people together to pause and feel, and that shared experience drives sustained collective action.”

You can get a sense of what Miller, Swatosh, and Neher sound like right here:

New Wave Opera presents “Currents of Change” at noon on Friday, Jan. 16, at PSU’s Lincoln Hall. Admission is free. More information is available right here.

***

Next is Jennifer Wright, a pianist and composer who embodies Portland Weird more thoroughly and devotedly than any other composer, more in fact than any two composers combined. You’d have to combine, like, three-to-five weird Portland composers to get to the level of Weird that Wright embodies (we’re slipping rapidly into Cronenberg territory here, which seems right). You’ve heard about her here before, maybe you’ve seen the Skeleton Piano with your own eyes, maybe you were at Zidell Yards for her Long Strings whatsit, maybe you were there (as I was) when she draped herself in Tron-ish blue lights and put e-bows on a harpsichord.

All of that looked like this:

And this:

And this:

The next logical step was a retrospective exhibition of Wright’s various instruments and installations and sound sculptures and such. She calls it “Echolocations: Sound machines & interactive installations seeking sense in a nonsensical world” and you can experience it for yourself at PLACE Galeria in Northwest Portland through the 17th. You can also get into the live music part of it with two concerts on the 16th and 17th, about which Wright has this to say:

This will be the first retrospective exhibition and concert series to feature my art instruments and sound sculptures.

I am busy creating several brand new pieces and interactive installations for your delight!

We’re going old-school for this intimate event, and concert tickets will be available AT THE DOOR ONLY ($25 general admission, $10 under-12s, cash & Venmo).

There are only a limited number of seats available for both nights, so if you want to reserve a spot in advance to be sure you get one, email me at jenniferawright(at)yahoo.com and I’ll save one for you!​

“Echolocations” runs through January 17, with performances on Jan. 16 & 17. More information – but not advance tickets – available right here.

***

Next up is 45||’s Pyxis Quartet and the next iteration of their “Portland School” series at Polaris Hall on the 20th. Here’s the menu for that one:

Alejandro Belgique: Divertimento
David Schiff: Ducal Suite
James Shields: Of Observation and Experience IV: Sowing Song (world premiere)
Nancy Ives: Quaking Giant (world premiere)
Mark Orton: MicroSuite

Sponsor

Two of the Big Four (Ives and Schiff), and two world premieres (Ives and Shields). You may remember Belgique (son of Joël and Ines Voglar) from Oregon Symphony’s performance of his Ostinato last November (read about that here). Mark Orton is the odd man out in this lineup; to paraphrase best-selling scifi author Neal Stephenson, you’ve never heard of him because he’s famous (Orton has scored a bunch of movies and was Kinda A Big Deal in San Francisco before heading to cloudier, evergreenier climes).

Here’s the second of Shields’s Obversations:

And here’s Nancy Ives with storyteller Ed Edmo:

And here’s Orton’s MicroSuite:

And here’s Belgique with his folks:

And you all know Professor Schiff:

Pyxis Quartet performs “Portland School 2” on Jan. 20 at Polaris Hall. Tickets and more information are available right here.

***

There’s a whole lot of Oregon on Orchestra Nova Northwest’s upcoming concert “¡El Espectacular!” at The Reser in Beaverton. You’ve got flutist and ONN executive director Adam Eccleston performing the flute concerto composed for him by Venezuelan-Oregonian composer Giancarlo Castro D’Addona (read about the work’s premiere, with Metropolitan Youth Philharmonic, right here). You’ve got Freddy Vilches, Oregon composer and Lewis & Clark College Professor of Hispanic Studies, doing his Freddy Vilches thing. Takohachi, one of several Japanese culture groups operating in Oregon, will do the taiko thing with yet another Oregon composer: founder and multi-instrumentalist Yumi Torimaru. Another local dance group, Bodyvox, will be there doing their Bodyvox thing. Young Artists Debut! winner Nikita Istratov will perform a little Prokofiev on the piano. And topping it all off, Portland drag superstar Dr. Poison Waters.

Spectacular!

Orchestra Nova Northwest presents “¡El Espectacular!” on Saturday, Jan. 24, at Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton. Tickets and more information are available right here.

***

We leave you today with one of our favorite ever-returning hometown heroes: vocalist extraordinaire Jimmie Herrod, singing once again with the Oregon Symphony on Jan. 24 & 25. The show is called “DIVAS: Jimmie Herrod Salutes Jazz,” and that probably means they’ll be doing a bunch of Liza Minnelli and Barbra Streisand standards instead of Jimmie’s lovely originals, but that suits us just fine. Any excuse to hear that voice in a concert hall is worth your time and attention.

Jimmie Herrod performs with Oregon Symphony on Jan. 24 & 25 at Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in Downtown Portland. More information and tickets available right here.