Work work work. Work work work work work.

Well folks, Labor Day is behind us, which means three things:

1. You have to go back to work;
2. You have to stop wearing white;
3. And all the classical seasons are about to start back up again.

Number one probably doesn’t impact you much, because if you’re like most ArtsWatch readers you’re either retired or you have a service industry job (e.g. food service, journalism, arts administration, private teaching, parenting) and thus didn’t actually get the day off yesterday. Number two probably doesn’t impact you either, unless you saw the John Waters classic Serial Mom and live in mortal dread of being cornered by Kathleen Turner at the courthouse payphone like Patty Hearst.

Ahem. Anyways, that leaves us with number three, which is what we’ll talk about today.

The password is “Fidelio”

Let’s start with 45th Parallel Universe’s Garden Parties–you already missed the first one last weekend, which is a damned shame since you could have worn your snazzy white outfit for the last time until next May. But they’re still happening every Sunday in September. The first one, on the 8th, is going by the snappy title “Harmonie,” which is German for “Harmony” and refers to the wind bands employed by the elites on hunting trips and other outdoor shindigs. Presumably they’re still employed at Bohemian Grove, unless they’ve started using Spotify’s AI DJs like everyone else. We have no way to be sure.

45||’s “Harmonie” is an all-Mozart, all-winds affair (oboes, horns, clarinets, bassoons, no flutes invited) featuring the little Viennese brat’s Serenade No. 12 in C minor (sextet), Divertimento in F major (also a sextet), and Gran Partita octet in B-flat major (octet, obviously). For those keeping score with their music theory hats on, that spells ii-V-I in B-flat major. Schenkerians and Jazzheads rejoice! “Harmonie” happens at the Northeast Portland home of the all-powerful Blessinger Family.

The next of these elitist Garden Parties makes up for the preceding week’s Expulsion of the Flutes with a flute-centric concert led by Pied Piper Zach Galatis and his merry band: cellist Marilyn de Oliveira, marimbist Michael Roberts, and harpist Matthew Tutsky. They’ll play a distinctly un-Mozarty set composed of music by Yuko Uebayashi, Gareth Farr, and rebel tanguero Astor Piazzola. This one’s also in Northeast Portland, four blocks down from the Blessinger Compound, and it’s on September 15–making it the last time you can decently and safely wear your straw hat in public.

The following Sunday, the first day of Fall, three-quarters of the always wonderful Pyxis Quartet (with new 45|| member and Oregon Symphony principal viola Amanda Grimm replacing Charles Noble) do their “Musical Tasting Menu” thing at the Furnary Residence, off Sunset Highway past Washington Park and the Oregon Zoo in the hilly region that is technically still “Southwest Portland” but is, in actuality, slouching towards Beaverton.

The present author will probably not be there–but if I were, I’d request Philip Glass’ String Quartet No. 5 just to hear them play it in a room full of furniture again.

The following Sunday, September 29, a date which has no real significance besides being violinist Jean-Luc Ponty’s birthday, mousai REMIX violinist Emily Cole closes the Garden Party run with “It’s A String Thing,” a whole bunch of duos between Cole and her various musical co-conspirators. According to 45||, “Emily has a passion for chamber music and connecting with people while sharing less common and beloved works,” which probably means we’ll hear less Haydn and Mozart and more Teresa Carreño and Florence Price:

More information and tickets for 45||’s garden parties are available at the universe’s website.

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We close this section with another party: Orlofsky’s Party, produced by Renegade Opera in collaboration with NW Children’s Theater, which hosts the shindig September 27-29 at their own venue, The Judy (aka The Judy Kafoury Center for Youth Arts) on Southwest Broadway in Downtown Portland.

Here’s what the Renegade folks have to say about this production:

Renegade Opera and Northwest Children’s Theater’s Catalyst Youth Company presents Orlofsky’s Party, a modern immersive retelling of Die Fledermaus by Johann Strauss II centering around the wealth and class gaps in society today and the consequences of culture’s exploitation of the world. Produced in partnership with Northwest Children’s Theater. In this new adaptation with a script by Claire Robertson-Preis and Libretto by Robertson-Preis, Abigail Krawson, and Madeline Ross, the frivolity and bubbling spirit of the original opera remains, along with the tangled web of characters and desires. Renegade Opera’s adaptation introduces some modern moral dilemmas into the mix, with discussions of climate, wealth inequality, the justice system, and the role of art in protest. Join the party.

Well that just sounds exactly like Renegade Opera, doesn’t it? Their previous work covers the same sort of territory: their first production, Secret Diaries of Pennsylvania Avenue, a weird multimedia collage of Mozartiana that you can read about here and immerse yourself in here; their dystopian and audience-immersive version of Mozart’s La clemenza di Tito, which you can read about here; and socially relevant, totally-in-the-now recent stuff like the apocalyptic Adam’s Run (more here and here) and the double-bill of American Patriots and She Loves You Back (read about those here).

Die Fledermaus–German for “Batman”–is a farce about false imprisonment and disguises and mistaken identities, and you’ve almost certainly heard some of Strauss Junior’s charming music therefrom. Here’s the famous “Champagne Song”:

And the also famous “Klänge der Heimat”:

In this production’s lead role, one of the greatest “trouser roles” in all of opera (after Cherubino and Octavian and Orfeo), we have mezzo Claire Robertson-Preis, whom you may remember from She Loves You Back and Portland Symphonic Choir’s recent dance-and-Rachmaninoff Vespers collaboration with push/FOLD (read about that here).

More information on Renegade Opera’s “Orlofsky’s Party” (and advance tickets) can be found here.

For the record

Now let’s talk about recorded music. We’ll get into The Return of Bandcamp Fee Free First Fridays later this week; for now we’ll consider a few recordings that aren’t on Bandcamp (yet).

The first is a video of Portland Youth Conservatory Orchestra premiering a new work by one of Oregon’s major composers, Nancy Ives. Here’s what Ives has to say about her piece The Spirit of the Columbia:

When PYCO conductor Larry Johnson approached me about building on my previous collaborative work with Ed Edmo (Shoshone/Bannock) and Joe Cantrell (Cherokee) to write a new piece for PYP’s 100th anniversary celebration, I was deeply honored, and truly inspired by his sincere desire to pay homage to the First Peoples of our region. The creation of this orchestral tone poem, which recounts the recent history of Celilo Falls, came fully into focus for me through discussions with Harold Paul, who gave me the name by telling us about the spiritual importance of the water and the fish, saying “The People are the spirit of the Columbia.”

Watch that one right here:

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Next up is another video, a preview video for an album that will be available later in the month, on the 13th–too late for this month’s BCFFFF but ahead of schedule for next month’s.

Now, if you’ve been reading Oregon ArtsWatch long enough you’ve probably heard Deena T. Grossman’s music and read about her previous albums and concerts. We’ll talk about 2022’s Becoming Durga on Thursday; for now, check out the album preview for Grossman’s upcoming Thrice Burned Forest.

We’ve already heard the whole thing, dear reader (the benefits of being in music journalism) and it’s fantastic. But you don’t have to wait until September 13 to hear it for yourself–you can attend the free album release party three days earlier, one week from today, September 10, at Congregation Beth Israel in Northwest Portland.

Actually you might have heard some of this album already: two of the pieces, The Circular Bridge and the title track, were premiered last year by a flute sextet at Leach Botanical Garden. Here’s what that looked and sounded like: 

And here’s what Charles Rose had to say about it at the time:

The next piece, The Circular Bridge, was the first of two world premieres that made me consider the music’s relationship with space. The program note may be quite abstract and serious, calling it “an extended structured improvisation,” but the performance was immane and playful. As sounds moved slowly between the flute players who stood in an arc around the circular bridge named in the title, the flutes melded with each other and their surroundings, drawing us listeners in, like trying to identify an insect or bird call in the distance.

The final piece on the program was the second world premiere and a highlight of the night, Thrice Burned Forest. It doesn’t do justice to say that the wildfires around Mt. Adams inspired the piece, because the actual story is so much more gripping. Grossman and a friend were hiking in the area when they heard “these breathy, sorrowful voices” and “wooden, percussive rattling sounds at unpredictable intervals.” The way she tells it, the forest itself spoke to her and gave her the sounds to form into the music we heard. The theme is all the more relevant as we enter wildfire season and we are inured to stories of wet bulbs and record highs.

The music was brilliant, haunting and beautiful. The almost Medieval modal harmonies were often voiced between the two groups of three flutes (piccolo and two flutes followed by two alto flutes and bass flute), occasionally erupting into more stochastic gestures. The ensemble’s collective vibrato was stunning as if they were all breathing as one.

It wasn’t all depressing, however. It looked like flutist and PSU professor Tara Boyle had a great time recreating those wooden rattling sounds, taking a lap around the circular bridge with a wooden mallet smacking against the metal railing. Lukas took a lap as well later on with similar enthusiasm.

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And here’s what the composer has to say about it in her program notes:

This set of five sonic meditations for six flutes is an extended, structured improvisation. From pure gestures in silence to progressively free and complex forms, each movement is based on one of two series of six pitches which can be played forwards or backwards. The performers may choose a subset of the melody or the complete set of six tones and experiment with dynamics, articulations, trills, flutter-tongueing and sliding pitches. The essential task for the group is to listen deeply to what they are creating and allow space for each voice to be heard. Is this not our task in any community; to create beauty with all of our individual voices combined? To cherish, conserve, consider and create.

Dedicated to Leach Botanical Garden.

Note two things in that program note. First, the immortal phrase “cherish, conserve, consider, create.” That comes from Lou Harrison, one of Grossman’s teachers, and the full line goes like this:

I developed a motto of my own, which is, in order: cherish, conserve, consider, create. It seems to me that that’s a general course of any enthusiasm. First, you find something that you love, and you cherish it. Then, of course, if you love it you want to conserve it, save it. And then, in doing so, you consider it in all of its parts and aspects. And out of that you may be moved to create something.

Second: this is music dedicated to a garden. Fitting for a composer who is the official composer-in-residence of Columbia Riverkeeper, a non-profit organization whose mission is to “protect and restore the water quality of the Columbia River and all life connected to it, from the headwaters to the Pacific Ocean.”

Deena T. Grossman’s “Thrice Burned Forest” album release happens at 7 pm, September 13, at Congregation Beth Israel. More information about this free event available here, and you can livestream the whole thing at CBI’s livestreamed services page here.

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Which brings us to Kenji Bunch. You’ll hear plenty more about Bunch and company soon enough–we recently interviewed the composer and Fear No Music artistic director about FNM’s upcoming season of nothing but Oregon composers, and you can read that next week. For now we want to do two things:

1. Tell you a little bit about the first concert in the season;
2. Share the good news about Kenji’s next album.

First things first: FNM’s season kicks off in late September, with their “Generations” program. That one features music by eight Oregon composers spread across four generations (Boomer, X, Millenial, Zoomer) at two different locations (Eliot Chapel at Reed College, The Old Church in Downtown Portland) on two different nights (September 27 and 30 respectively), with a third event between them (Demystifying New Music at Reed College on the 29th). You can get more information and order “tickets” right here.

We say “tickets” because FNM uses a donation-based model. When you go to “buy” your “tickets” for “$25” you see this message:

We will not turn away anyone for the lack of funds. Please contact allears@fearnomusic.org to reserve a ticket at a price point that works for you, or to reach out with any questions or concerns.

Meaning that if you want to give these fine folks your money (and you should! at a smidge over $3 per composer that’s a steal) you can just order up those “tickets” and hum a satisfied little tune to yourself:

We’ve also just discovered, by trial and error, that you can input a different amount and reserve your “tickets” for as little as $5 each (which comes to, um, $0.625 per composer, which is still more than they’d make otherwise). But if you work in food service, journalism, arts administration, private teaching, parenting, or some other service industry job, you can write to FNM and probably get in for free. Hell, you could probably just show up and get in for free.

Now as for that recording: we recently heard the astonishing news that Kenji’s complete string quartets have just been recorded by no less an ensemble than the Telegraph Quartet, formerly the San Francisco Conservatory of Music’s Quartet-in-Residence, now Quartet-in-Residence with the University of Michigan.

Here’s what the composer has to say about it:

About a year ago, Phenotypic Recordings Creative Director Stephen Prutsman approached the Telegraph Quartet about a project to record a living composer’s complete works for string quartet. The quartet selected me for the project and I shared my five string quartets with them.

We met here in town back in January when they came through to play Friends of Chamber Music. I met with them again by chance in Vermont over the summer. Other than that, we corresponded via text and email until last week. I spent two days rehearsing with them and then three days in the studio recording all five quartets.

Of particular note- the studio was Skywalker Sound in the Bay Area and the engineer was the legendary Leslie Ann Jones– so working with her and Steve Prutsman as producer was a super inspiring experience.

Also- to relate this back to FNM- Phenotypic really advocates “music with a mission” and has committed to donating all streaming proceeds to our work with Fear No Music’s Young Composers Project!

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Well damn! Stay tuned for more about all of this–and get your FNM “tickets” now.

Meanwhile, elsewhere

In the meantime, you can hear Telegraph Quartet in person this very month. They’re the opening act of Ashland’s Chamber Music Concerts series, with a performance September 20 at Southern Oregon University’s Music Recital Hall. They’ll play Ravel’s String Quartet in F Major, Beethoven’s String Quartet in Eb-major, Op. 74 “Harp” and Poem for String Quartet by British composer and viola virtuoso Rebecca Clarke. Here’s the Telegraph folks doing what they could to stay fresh on the Ravel during the pandemic:

Tickets and more information available here.

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Gotta be brutally honest–we can’t help thinking Delgani String Quartet kinda dropped the ball in letting some rando Bay Area group record the complete quartets of one of the Big Four Names of the Oregon School of Composition. But we’re still excited about their season, which starts at the end of September with the five concerts of their “A World of Music” program. As usual with Delgani, they take each of their programs on the road with them: Salem on 9/26, Corvallis on 9/27, Portland on 9/28, and then home to Eugene on 9/29 and 10/1 (when they’ll also record virtual livestreams for folks who live in, say, Bend or Astoria or Ashland or whatever).

This first program of the season features the music of Antonín Dvořák, Gabriela Lena Frank, Osvaldo Golijov, Zhou Long, Wynton Marsalis, Jessie Montgomery, and Peter Sculthorpe. And since Delgani is currently between violists, they have a series of guests this season. For this program, it’s Oregon Symphony Principal Viola Amanda Grimm, whom we’ve already heard from twice in this column (with Pyxis Quartet and on the Grossman album).

This is also one of those “interdisciplinary” concerts: Delgani collaborates with choreographer Sara Stockwell and a handful of her Eugene Ballet pals for various minuets, bagatelles, contradanzas, and so on. Also appearing are didgeridooist Steven Kent on the Sculthorpe (String Quartet No. 12 “From Ubirr”) and Delgani co-founder (and executive director) Wyatt True for the Dvořák (one movement of the Op. 97 quintet).

“A World of Music” happens September 26 through October 1 at various locations on Oregon’s Interstate Corridor. Tickets and more information available at Delgani’s website.

“Symphony” means “sounding together”

We close with the orchestras. First up: Orchestra Nova Northwest, formerly known as Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra (we liked the old name better #sorrynotsorry). On September 14 & 15, ONN–still under the leadership of Steven Byess–performs their “Essence American” program at Reynolds High School in Troutdale and at The Reser in Beaverton, featuring piano soloist Artina McCain. We love this program of all Black composers: Dance Tribute for Orchestra and Piano Obbligato by Ghanaian-American composer Fred Onovwerosuoke, Lyric for Strings by Pulitzer-winner George Walker, and two by Florence Price. No doubt you’ve been hearing the latter plenty the last few years, as we’ve all started making an effort to listen more to music by Black composers (yes, especially to Black composers), and Price is one whose music has emerged as not only Socially Relevant but Good, Actually.

ONN will perform Price’s Piano Concerto in D Minor in One Movement and her Symphony No. 1 in E Minor. Damien Geter–yes, that Damien Geter, he of An African-American Requiem fame–wrote about this very symphony when Metropolitan Youth Symphony played it five years ago. Here’s what he had to say at the time:

“I have two handicaps—those of sex and race,” wrote American composer Florence Price to Boston Symphony Orchestra music director Serge Koussevitzky. “I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.”

In 1943, Price, who was trying to get more of her orchestral music performed, wrote Koussevitzky, a champion of promising American composers. As a result of winning the Rodman Wanamaker Competition in 1932, Price’s Symphony No. 1 in E minor garnered the attention of Frederick Stock, conductor of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, who premiered the work in June 1933–making it the first piece by an African American woman to be played by a major symphony orchestra.

On May 21, 86 years after that performance, Portland’s Metropolitan Youth Symphony(MYS) debuted what was believed to be the West Coast premiere of Price’s Symphony No. 1 on a program that also featured her Dances in the Canebrakes, orchestrated by William Grant Still.

One would think that a piece with such an auspicious beginning would find a comfortable home planted neatly among the crop of established oeuvre we now know as “standard repertoire.” Although these two honors brought Price some national acclaim, it was not enough to give the piece legs. Koussevitzky never even responded to her letter, nor did other orchestras in her time.

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In fact, it’s only in the last twenty years, and with the recent discovery of Price’s manuscripts–which were left in the attic of her abandoned summer home in Chicago and rediscovered in 2009–that musicians are finally breathing life into her instrumental music. (Her songs and arrangements of spirituals didn’t see quite the same neglect as her orchestral music.)

Tickets and more information available here.

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Next up is Oregon Symphony Orchestra, who will perform two programs in September. First is Chopin’s Piano Concerto No. 1 and Richard Strauss’ An Alpine Symphony, with music director David Danzmayr at the podium and Garrick Ohlsson at the piano. That’s on September 21-23, and you can read all about it here.

On the 28th and 29th, Deanna Tham conducts the next in the orchestra’s live-to-film series, and this one is a doozy: Close Encounters of the Third Kind. You probably already have that infamous five-note theme stuck in your head, and you might even remember the big finale sequence with all the flashing lights and the interplanetary musical serenade. Two more reasons to check this one out:

1. It’s still a damn fine movie (we recently had the good fortune to watch it again on the big screen and loved it, in all its late ‘70s glory, more than ever);
2. The whole rest of the score is also wonderful. Consider this passage, a classic bit of John Williams chase-scene scoring:

More information and tickets available here.

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On the 26th, Eugene Symphony opens its season with Francesco Lecce-Chong conducting Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring, the first truly great Modern Classical Piece and one of those Dead White European Male Classics that you do, in fact, have to go hear live at least once. Like all great orchestral works, it’s a study in what can be done with a hundred-odd top-notch instrumentalists in a concert hall.

Also on the bill: Jennifer Higdon’s Violin Concerto with Benjamin Beilman, who’s performed it aplenty. Here he is playing it in Montpellier:

More information and tickets available here.

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The Rogue Valley Symphony gets its season going with another big name in American music, and one that’s oddly appropriate for a region known for its dedication to folk and country music: Edgar Meyer. There’s some Rossini and Copland on the program, which happens September 27-29 at venues across the valley (Medford, Ashland, Grants Pass), but it’s the bassist-composer who’s the real star here. The Grammy-winning polystylist will play two concerti, his own and the Bottesini in B Minor. This represents half of his lovely 2002 album Meyer & Bottesini Concertos, and you can hear that right here:

And you can watch the man himself performing Bottesini in 2018 right here:

More information and tickets available here.

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On the coast, the Newport Symphony Orchestra crashes into its season September 28 & 29 with Schumann’s Fourth Symphony in D Minor (one that many of us don’t bother with, though it’s quite good), the Saint-Saëns Cello Concerto No. 1 in A Minor, the goofy-but-catchy Saint-Saëns “Bacchanale” (from Samson et Delila), and Schelemo by Ernest Bloch, “The Man from Agate Beach.”

A word about that last one. Bloch is, in many ways, the first Oregonian composer. He may have been born in Switzerland and lived much of his life in other parts of the United States, but he came to settle here in the most Oregonian of ways: he broke down on the highway. Here’s what The Lincoln County Historical Society has to say about it:

Ernest and Marguerite Bloch lived in Agate Beach from 1941 to 1963. Ernest died in 1959, Marguerite in 1963. In 1976 the Governor of Oregon accompanied by Bloch’s three children dedicated the Ernest Bloch Memorial in a wayside in Agate Beach near the home in which the Blochs lived. Later, in 2009, fifty years after Bloch’s passing, the Newport City Council dedicated Ernest Bloch Place at 49th Street. In 2017 the State of Oregon named the wayside near the Bloch home the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside. In July 2018 Ernest Bloch Place was expanded and dedicated along with the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside. Ernest Bloch Place now features an Ernest Bloch Monument, five benches, an Interpretive Sign, and a marker.

Much has been written about composer Ernest Bloch over the past century, beginning with his move to the United States in 1916 from his home in Geneva, Switzerland. Fast forward to the summer of 1941 when he found himself stranded on Highway 101 as he was returning from teaching music theory at UC Berkeley. Finding himself in Agate Beach he wandered the area and came upon a house for sale on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean.

Schelomo: Rhapsodie Hébraïque for Violoncello and Orchestra is one of Bloch’s best known works, a portrait of the great Hebrew king (“Schelomo” means “Solomon”) for orchestra and cello. Here’s Portland Youth Philharmonic playing it in 2019 with cellist Kira Wang:

More information and tickets available here.

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We leave you with a concert that isn’t in Oregon, but merits our attention nonetheless. On the 28th and 29th, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra performs (alongside Dvořák’s Eighth) a piece by their own conductor, maestro Salvodor Brotons. And not just any piece, but a concerto for brass quintet.

Brass quintet!

It’s one thing to write a concerto. Any fool can write a concerto. According to a possibly apocryphal Stravinsky quote, Vivaldi wrote the same violin concerto 500 times. Then there’s your double concertos and your sinfonia concertantes and so on. A triple concerto here and there. But five players, a whole ensemble in front of a whole orchestra–it’s not that it’s not done (consider Schoenberg, Messiaen, Rodrigo) but it’s rare enough to be considered audacious.

Performing with Maestro Brotonos and the VSO will be the Spanish Brass, who commissioned the piece. Here they are performing it in 2016:

More information and tickets available here.