Behold! This is part two of a two-part series on orchestras in Oregon. You can read part one, treating the many orchestras dwelling in the great gravity well that is Portland, right here. Part two begins just outside of Portland, in Beaverton.

Beaverton Symphony Orchestra (Beaverton)

Gone, gone are the days when Beaverton was a mere suburb of Portland. Of course, it is still a suburb of Portland, and will remain so for as long as both cities exist–it’s that damning “mere” that’s been gradually filed off in the last decade or so. A big part of that was Travis Hatton, who led the BSO for twelve years and passed away in 2022. Here’s the orchestra, under Hatton’s baton, performing with the gonzo Oregon trio 3 Leg Torso in 2020:

Hatton’s successor, chosen this year after an interim period with Niel DePonte at the podium, is Pierre-Alain Chevalier (no stranger to the PNW, with appointments from Tualitan to Mount Hood Community College); he’ll keep the flame burning with a string of classical concerts featuring stalwarts from across the European classical tradition. Next May it’s Beethoven’s Fifth and the winners of their Young Artists Competition; the Competition itself is in March. March also features Ravel & Grieg & Sibelius, and January’s concert is another Sibeliad–his Symphony No. 2 anchors an all-French program alongside Saint-Saëns and Delius.

As in part one, we’re mostly choosing one concert from each group’s upcoming season. For BSO, it’s their next: this month’s fall concert, featuring a Schubert symphony (the “Unfinished” one) and a bit of Mendelssohn (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage) and the Brahms Violin Concerto. For the Brahms–his only concerto for violin–BSO will be joined by a long-time friend of the orchestra, Kunito Nishitani, an alum of Portland State University and Metropolitan Youth Symphony who now resides and works in Tokyo.

BSO’s fall concert takes place October 25 & 27 at Village Church in Beaverton. More information and tickets available here.

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Salem Philharmonic Orchestra (Salem)

Like BSO, SPO’s season is rich with European and American classics: Brahms and Schumann (Symphony No. 3 and Piano Concerto in A minor in November); a nice spread of “family” stuff in December (suites and overtures and fanfares by Bernstein, Khatchaturian, Copland, Tchaikovsky, Fauré); a big dose of Ravel and some more Schumann (Don Quichotte à Dulcinée and Concerto for Piano Left Hand in D major and Symphony No. 4 in April); you get the idea.

The one we’re interested in happens at the end of the season, on May 31 and June 1. It’s not just that it’s Verdi (La Forza del Destino) alongside Tchaikovsky (Symphony No. 4), though that would be enough. It’s that they’re performing a work by their own conductor, violinist and Lake Oswegian Jonathan DeBruyn–his Apocalyptic Maiden is the centerpiece of the concert. It doesn’t get a whole lot more local than that.

More information and tickets for SPO’s season are available right here.

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Sunnyside Symphony Orchestra (Portland)

Ha! You thought we were done with Portland, didn’t you? We’ve included this one here in part two because of SSO’s connection to both Hatton (their founding director) and DeBruyn (their present director). The orchestra is based at Sunnyside Seventh-day Adventist Church out in Southeast, across I-205 from Montavilla, under the shadow of Kelly Butte in the part of Portland we used to call “The Numbers.” But don’t let that fool you–there’s nothing provincial about this orchestra. Take a look at their offerings this season: Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Mendelssohn in October; Beach, Bartók and Beethoven in February; Barber and Holst in May.

Their “one concert” is another one featuring music by DeBruyn, and this time it’s a whole symphony. They’ll perform his Emmanuel Symphony on December 8 alongside holiday favorites by Grieg and Tchaikovsky.

You can get a good sense of what this orchestra and its leader are all about from this video of their most recent concert (they livestream all of ‘em), featuring the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony on a properly gigantic church organ and St. John’s Suite by DeBruyn’s father Randall:

All SSO concerts are free and open to the public. More information available right here.

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Willamette Valley Symphony (Corvallis & Albany)

Say it with me: will-AM-it. Not WILL-em-ETTE. There’s plenty to love in the upcoming WVS season, starting with this month’s concert featuring the extravagant, ever-popular Pictures at an Exhibition (Mussorgsky, orchestrated by Ravel) and the equally extravagant, equally ever-popular Mendelssohn Violin Concerto with Delgani String Quartet’s current first violinist Anthea Kreston. Carry on through November, when they’ll play more Mussorgsky and Britten’s Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra and a piece by the winner of their Student Composition Competition. February, dance music by Bernstein and Saint-Saëns and Tchaikovsky. April, Haydn’s Trumpet Concerto and two symphonies, one by Beethoven (the extravagant, ever-popular Sixth) and one by Alan Hovhaness–his Second, “Mysterious Mountain,” a lovely work and a rare chance for you to hear a mid-century American symphony by someone other than Philip Glass.

The “one” for this season is the closer, June 7 in Albany and June 8 in Corvallis. This one also features two symphonies, both by Americans. The first is William Grant Still’s Afro-American Symphony, the first large-scale symphonic work by an African-American composer and the source of this famous quote from the composer:

I seek in the Afro-American Symphony to portray not the higher type of colored American, but the sons of the soil, who still retain so many of the traits peculiar to their African forebears; who have not responded completely to the transforming effect of progress.

There’s a lot being said (and being left unsaid) in that quote, isn’t there?

The other symphony on this concert is by an Oregon composer, Freddy Vilches; WVS will complement Still’s Afro-American Symphony with Vilches’ African/Cuban Symphony. You may remember his Latin American Suite from Orchestra Nova Northwest’s performance last year, when they were still Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra (read about that here). Or you may have heard his Abya Yala when he and his band performed it with Resonance Ensemble in 2022:

More information and tickets for Willamette Valley Symphony’s season can be found right here.

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Oregon Mozart Players (Eugene)

Not one but two Eugene orchestras are in the midst of director searches, using a series of concerts to audition replacements for their outgoing artistic directors. Oregon Mozart Players director Kelly Kuo remains as “Artistic Director Emeritus,” and Daniel Cho currently serves as Interim Artistic Director. Cho will get his shot at the Big Job when he conducts his own audition concert in November, and he has the privilege of watching his competitors conduct theirs first.

The three concerts reflect each other rather nicely: one modern work, one Beethoven symphony, and the same movement of the same Mozart violin concerto (No. 5, Mvt. III: Tempi di Minuetto) with the same soloist, Sunmi Chang. On October 5, Kevin Fitzgerald will conduct OMP through David Lang’s sweet air and Beethoven’s Seventh; on October 19, David Amado will conduct Arvo Pärt’s Fratres and Beethoven’s First; on November 23, Cho will conduct Carlos Simon’s Fate Now Conquers and Beethoven’s Fifth.

May the best man win!

OMP’s concerts happen at Central Presbyterian Church in Eugene. For more information and tickets, visit their website right here.

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Eugene Symphony (Eugene)

Eugene Symphony has a simply beautiful season; it’s Francesco Lecce-Chong’s last as simply “Artistic Director” and his first as “Artistic Partner.” As with OMP, there will be a series of audition concerts, but instead of Mozart it’s all five Beethoven piano concertos. On October 24, Alexander Prior conducts the First, with soloist Ying Li, and Dvořák’s Eighth Symphony. On November 21, Farkhad Khudyev conducts the Second, with soloist Chaeyoung Park, and Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony. On December 12, Rory MacDonald conducts the Third, with soloist Anthony Ratinov, and Rachmaninoff’s Symphony No. 2. On January 23, Tania Miller conducts the Fourth, with soloist Harmony Zhu, and Sibelius’ Symphony No. 1. And on February 13, Taichi Fukumura conducts the Fifth, with soloist Clayton Stephenson, and Brahms’ Symphony No. 4.

Phew! Then Lecce-Chong is back on the podium March 20 for The Planets, some John “Not Luther” Adams, and a Eugene Symphony co-commission: pianist-composer Dan Tepfer’s concerto for piano and orchestra, Three Scales of Interconnection. He’s at it again on April 24 for Copland’s Tender Land Suite and Brahms’ gargantuan Ein deutsches Requiem. 

And then there’s the “one,” the big one: on May 22 Lecce-Chong and Eugene Symphony are joined by Oregon jazz giant Darrell Grant and his big band, the Pacific Northwest Jazz All-Stars, for Wynton Marsalis’ Swing Symphony. This is the one you have to be there for.

Eugene Symphony performs at The Hult Center in Eugene. More information and tickets available right here.

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Rogue Valley Symphony (Ashland, Medford, and Grants Pass)

Here’s what stands out in the RVS season, music director Martin Majkut’s fifteenth: all the American composers! Sure, they’ve got the Brahms First and the Beethoven Fifth in there, and some Mozart and Dvořák and Saint-Saëns, but it’s the Americans who dominate this season in the Rogue Valley.

October 18-20, it’s RVS composer-in-residence David Ludwig’s Rogue Riverrun. RVS commissioned this one and gives the premiere; you probably remember Ludwig’s music from various Chamber Music Northwest appearances (perhaps most memorably, last year’s The Anchoress and 2018’s Pangæa). On January 10-12, RVS performs Christopher Theofanidis’ Bassoon Concerto with the composer’s Yale classmate Martin Kuuskmann, for whom it was composed. On February 7-9, violinist Melissa White joins RVS for Florence Price’s Violin Concerto No. 2 in D minor, one of several works by the African-American composer which were thought lost before being rediscovered in 2009 (read more about that here). And on April 25-27, RVS will perform Joan Tower’s monumental, Grammy-winning Made in America. If you’ve only ever heard Tower’s various Fanfares, this is your chance to soak up what one of America’s greatest living composers does with a full orchestral palette.

Rogue Valley Symphony performs their programs thrice: at Southern Oregon University in Ashland; at The Craterian Theater at the Collier Center for the Performing Arts in Medford; and at Grants Pass Performing Arts Center in, well, Grants Pass. Tickets and more information right here.

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Central Oregon Symphony (Bend)

COS recently got hit hard when they lost their usual venue over the summer; here’s what they had to say about it:

In a pivotal moment for Bend’s cultural landscape, Bend-La Pine Schools has announced the emergency demolition of the beloved Bend Senior High School auditorium. This decision, driven by safety concerns stemming from structural issues, marks a significant change for a venue deeply cherished by the community, including the Central Oregon Symphony.

The Symphony fondly remembers decades of performances on this stage that have enriched countless lives in our region. If you’d like to reminisce on these concerts with us, you can watch replays here.

This year, we are performing at a new venue — Caldera High School Auditorium. After the sudden demolition of our beloved home at Bend Senior High School’s auditorium in July, we’ve had to make a significant change. While this marks the end of an era, it is also a fresh start. We are so grateful for your support during this transition.

As of this writing, the only full orchestra concert on the calendar for the upcoming season is their fall concert on November 2-3. It’s a fine program, with Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet Suite No. 2 and that almighty Brahms Symphony No. 1. Also, several chamber concerts are scattered through the next few months, starting with this weekend’s fundraising recital featuring COS principal oboist Ryan Zwahlen and pianist Gary Ruppert.

Central Oregon Symphony performs at Caldera High School in Bend; chamber music concerts happen around Bend, Prineville, Sunriver, and Redmond. More information and season tickets are available right here.

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Grande Ronde Symphony (La Grande)

If you’ve come with us so far, you can see the journey we’ve taken: down the I-5 corridor from Portland to Ashland, then up through the heart of Oregon into Bend and environs. Now we continue north and east, past John Day and Malheur National Forest, and come to La Grande, surrounded by mountains up in the Grande Ronde Valley.

There you’ll find the Grand Ronde Symphony Orchestra, directed by Zach Banks, a fine cellist and a lovely human being and one of the present author’s old college friends from PSU, where Banks studied with the legendary Hamilton Cheifetz (whom you can hear with the long-running Florestan Trio at The Old Church back in Portland this very weekend). Here’s Banks and the GRSO folks doing a late quarantine-era concert in early 2021:

The symphony performs three programs throughout the upcoming season–in November, March, and May–and you can read more about them here and at their website here. One highlight (few details have been made available as of this writing) is an item from the fall concert’s lineup, the J.S. Bach Concerto for Oboe and Violin, with soloists Lauren Nebel and Viet Block.

More information on the Grande Ronde Symphony is available right here.

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Oregon East Symphony (Pendleton)

Staying out here in Eastern Oregon, we come down out of the mountains and into Pendleton, home of the Oregon East Symphony, where Bloch and Banks serve as Assistant Concertmaster and Principal Cello (as well as filling various other roles such as Assistant Conductor and Education Director and Symphony Strings Instructor). This orchestra’s fall concert features nothing less than the almighty Beethoven Ninth, with the OES Chorale and the Hermiston High School Choir joining forces for that immortal last movement.

And on their spring concert next May, alongside some Strauss and Schubert’s Third, you can hear guest soloist Jacqueline Wilson give the Oregon premiere of Navajo composer Connor Chee’s Bassoon Concerto.

More information on the Oregon East Symphony is available right here.

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Columbia Gorge Orchestra Association (Hood River)

Continuing inland, we find the Columbia Gorge Orchestra Association bringing together a variety of musical ensembles in Hood River–the Jazz Collective Big Band, the Hood River String Quartet, the Voci Community Choir, the Stages Musical Theater troupe, and the Gorge Sinfonietta. It’s the latter that concerns us today.

The Sinfonietta performs thrice this season, in the customary Fall-Winter/Spring-Summer configuration. In November, it’s Soviet-Armenian composer Alexander Arutunian’s 1950 Trumpet Concerto in Ab Major (with soloist Anders Foster) alongside a bit of Sibelius and the gloriously understated Gaelic Symphony by American composer Amy Beach. In March they’ll play Romeo & Juliet (Tchaikovsky’s, not Prokoviev’s, and what is it with Russians and Romeo & Juliet anyways?) and Dvořák’s Eighth. And in June they’ll perform Joan Tower’s Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman, Brahms’ First, and Koussevitzky’s Bass Concerto with soloist Clinton O’Brien (principal bassist of Portland Opera and Orchestra Nova Northwest and a busy guy all over the state).

More information and tickets for Columbia Gorge Orchestra Association concerts available right here.

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Vancouver Symphony Orchestra (Vancouver, WA)

Continuing your journey west from Hood River, stop before you get anywhere near Portland and take a trip over the famous Bridge of the Gods–$3 pays for the toll and the view, and lands you on Highway 14 in Washington State. From there, breeze on into Vancouver and get ready for the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

Their whole season is cool enough, ending with Catalan composer Xavier Montsalvatge’s Concerto for Harp and Orchestra in April (featuring Spanish harpist Cristina Montes Mateo) and the Rite of Spring with Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto (soloist Olga Kern) on May 31 & June 1. But the one we have our ears out for happens next month, November 2 & 3, with Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 10 and Rachel Barton Pine performing Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto in E minor. Here’s Pine playing the Mendelssohn in Finland back in 2015:

More information and tickets for VSO’s season available right here.

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North Oregon Coast Symphony & Columbia River Symphony (Astoria)

Continue to veer around Portland, working your way up through Longview, Wash., and across another bridge back into Rainier, Oregon and keep rolling until you smell the ocean. You have finally reached the cinematic town of Astoria, home of the Goonies House and the Short Circuit House and the Kindergarten Cop School and the beautiful Astoria Column and that huge bridge going over the mouth of the mighty Columbia and … wait, where were we?

Right, right, Astoria. Here you technically have two orchestras, but we’ve listed them together since they’re both the brainchildren of trumpeter, conductor, and artistic director Cory Pederson. NOCS performs three programs in their season (at Astoria’s Charlene Larsen Performing Arts Center and also down Highway 101 at St. Catherine Episcopal Church in Nehalem): November’s “Grand Openings,” March’s “Family Concert,” and June’s “Spring Concert.” CRS picks up the slack with a “Holiday Concert” in December. No matter the season, though, it’s likely to be foggy and/or rainy, so plan accordingly.

More information on NOCS and CRS can be found on their respective websites here and here.

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Newport Symphony Orchestra (Newport)

Ah, the Oregon Coast. There’s no place in the world quite like the Oregon Coast. You’ve got Redwoods, and twisty windswept cliffside roads, and sand dunes, and whale-watching coves, and all manner of fine cheeses, and a lovely orchestra right in the midst of the waves: the Newport Symphony’s two big claims to fame are its famous former Resident Conductor (actor David Ogden Stiers, who passed away in 2018) and its association with the first classical composer to be really associated with Oregon (Ernst Bloch, also known as The Man from Agate Beach). You may or may not know Stiers to look at him (unless you’re a fan of M*A*S*H), but you’ve definitely heard his voice (unless you somehow missed Beauty and the Beast).

As for Bloch, you can almost always count on NSO playing some of his music each season. This season, that’ll happen during their candlelight “Baroque and Beyond for the Holidays” concerts December 4, led by longtime Music Director Adam Flatt. Between pieces by Bach and Handel, they’ll play Bloch’s Concertino for Flute, Viola, and Strings with soloists Erin Adair on flute and Shauna Keyes on viola. 

Then, in January, they’ll give a repeat performance of a locally-inspired work they commissioned and premiered in 2023, Sara Carina Graef’s Yakona (read about that here). And you can listen to that premiere right here:

More information and tickets for NSO’s season can be found on their website right here.

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And that brings us back to doh doh doh doh! No doubt we forgot your favorite hometown orchestra, dear reader. Let us know in the comments…and we’ll add em here!

Willamette Falls Symphony (Oregon City)

WFS has a lovely season planned. First up is this month’s concert, featuring Beethoven’s Sixth and Schumann’s Violin Concerto–with, as Maestro Perlman mentions below, the extraordinary Tomas Cotik as soloist. If you’ve been in Oregon classical circles for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard Cotik. The present author first met him at PSU, where he teaches when he’s not busy recording Mozart and Schubert with pianist Tao Lin or plumbing the realms of Augmented Reality; I personally first heard him work his magick at the Lou Harrison centennial “CeLOUbration” in 2017, performing to perfection the Great Maverick’s Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra. Watch that right here:

Later in the season, next April, WFS plays Hindemith’s medievally folksy Der Schwanendreher with another fine soloist, Delgani violist Kimberlee Uwate. She’s no stranger to Hindemith; here she is playing and discussing the great German composer-theorist’s Sonata for Viola Sonata (plus John Tower and Shostakovich) at UC Davis in 2017:

But it’s the December “Family Concert” that really caught our attention. It’s not just that they’re playing a remarkable piece of music-and-storytelling, though that would be impressive enough. They’re also playing music by an Oregon composer, Nicole Buetti.

Storytelling first. Way back in the antediluvian Early Aughts (the year 2000 to be precise), the actor John Lithgow–known for exceedingly memorable performances in The World According to Garp, Twilight Zone: The Movie, The Adventures of Buckaroo Bonzai Across the 8th Dimension, Harry and the Hendersons, and the television series Third Rock from the Sun–surprised exactly nobody by releasing a children’s book about a child music prodigy, The Remarkable Farkle McBride. There was an accompanying album of kids’ songs, a proposed collaboration with Waylon Jennings, it was a whole thing.

Anyways, that led to swing musician Bill Elliott, one of Hollywood’s many relatively-unsung yeopersons, composing a symphonic suite out of Farkle. Here’s the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra performing that earlier this year:

WFS will perform it in December with the orchestra’s president, Suzanne Chimenti, in the narrator role.

You’ve heard all about Oregon composer and contrabassoonist Buetti at ArtsWatch, dear reader: you can read about her Odyssey Overture here and here; read about her work with puppets and children’s songs here; and read about her “elegy for viola and orchestra,” Quasar, right here. Another of Hollywood’s (former) yeopersons, Buetti made her home in the PNW some years ago and has been delighting Oregon audiences ever since.

WFS will perform her recent Spirit of the Wind and Water, premiered just earlier this year by another orchestra we mentioned earlier–the Gorge Sinfonietta. Watch and listen right here:

Willamette Falls Symphony performs at Oregon City United Methodist Church and online. More information and tickets available right here.