Opera on the Move

• ArtsWatch reported earlier this year that Portland Opera intended to sell its home since 2003. Last week, the Oregonian reported that the company had sold its Hampton Opera Center building and an adjoining parcel for $11 million to the Native American Rehabilitation Association of the Northwest, a social services organization that offers health and substance abuse treatment to Native communities.

• As we reported last year, two of the opera building’s other tenants, All Classical Radio and Friends of Chamber Music, are relocating to downtown Portland’s KOIN tower this summer. The current 45,000 square foot HQ overlooking the Willamette River abuts a stretch of east bank riverfront property next to Oregon Museum of Science & Industry that’s long been slated for extensive redevelopment. ArtsWatch reached out to PO for more information about its next home and rehearsal spaces, but hasn’t received a reply. 

• Speaking of PO, its Interim Music Director and Artistic Adviser Damien Geter’s new opera American Apollo premiered this month at Des Moines Opera. “Geter, himself a bass-baritone, writes beautifully for voices and elegantly for orchestra,” gushed New Yorker critic Alex Ross. “His Apollo score fuses Coplandesque Americana, ostinato-driven minimalism, and languid blues.” Let’s hope we get to experience it in Oregon soon. And PO’s award-winning Portland-based singer Katherine Goforth made her Kennedy Center debut this past May.

Choral Champs

• Congrats to the University of Oregon Chamber Choir, conducted by Sharon Paul, which won top honors among university and college choirs and first place in Sacred Choral Music with accompaniment in July’s 13th annual World Choir Games 2024, held in Auckland, New Zealand.

• In other choral news, Portland’s ever-adventurous Resonance Ensemble announced the upcoming release of its new album, Safe Harbor, which features 12 Resonance commissions, all inspired by themes of sanctuary, resilience, and hope. Any album of entirely new choral music is cause for celebration, and especially so for Oregonians as the lineup includes familiar names like Jasmine Barnes, Kenji Bunch, James DePreist, Lady Dane Figueroa Edidi, Cecille Elliott, Damien Geter, Darrell Grant, Joe Kye, S. Renee Mitchell, Kimberly R. Osberg, Judy A. Rose, A. Mimi Sei, Sonya Renee Taylor, Mari Esabel Valverde, and Vin Shambry. ArtsWatch readers can help make the album a reality by contributing this week to Resonance’s Kickstarter campaign, which is close to reaching its goal.

• Kudos to another stellar congregation of Portland voices, Cappella Romana, which scored a $35,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for its Black Voices in Orthodox Music series, which in 2025 will feature the Canon for Racial Reconciliation by Nicholas Reeves and Isaac Cates. 

• The group’s Associate Music Director, John Michael Boyer, received the Saint Romanos Medallion, the highest honor awarded to the Byzantine church music ministry, for “his exceptional dedication to the Church and Her music,” including Heaven and Earth, a new English setting of Psalm 103 which he directed and for which he was one of a quintet of contemporary composers pulled together by Cappella Romana’s publications director Richard Barrett, and three recent books Byzantine Chant: the Received Tradition – A Lesson Book,” Sun of Justice: Byzantine Chant in English for Christmas, and Mysteries: Byzantine Chant in English for the Orthodox Sacraments, to be released in November. 

• Portland’s Satori Men’s Chorus was honored by its home city for its 30th anniversary and three decades of efforts to promote peace.

• Finally, it’s not exactly Oregon news per se, but ArtsWatch offers condolences to the family of one of America’s greatest singers and advocates for American music, tenor Paul Sperry, who died this summer. His son Ethan directs Oregon Repertory Singers and Portland State University’s choral programs. 

Radio Reports

• Anywhere else, it’d be hard to imagine the phrase “classical music radio” appearing in a wrap up of important arts news. But not in Oregon, thanks mostly to Portland’s ambitious All Classical Radio, whose intrepid efforts to enrich that medium and make it meaningful to many more listeners have regularly appeared in ArtsWatch’s periodic reports. This time, we’re passing on news of All Classical’s latest record release, ELEVATE, the second installment in the station’s laudable Recording Inclusivity Initiative, which seeks to broaden the repertoire of, and audience for, classical music radio. The new album’s highlight: erstwhile Portlander Damien Geter’s scintillating string quartet Neo-Soul, and performances by prominent Oregon classical musicians: pianists, María García and Yoko Greeney, violist Jennifer Arnold, flutist Martha Long, cellist Nancy Ives, and violinists Emily Cole, Inés Voglar Belgique, and Ruby Chen. (Read an interview with Garcia and Long about the album.)

• The station also released a major milestone in Oregon arts chronicles: Artist Anthology: 40 Creatives of the Pacific Northwest, which features profiles of musicians, writers, actors and other NW artists including esteemed familiar figures such as composer/educator/pianist Darrell Grant, composers Caroline Shaw, Andy Akiho, Gabriella Smith and many more. You can read many of the stories online now, and pre-order the handsome print edition. Full disclosure: I contributed a couple of the profiles. The anthology project was spearheaded by All Classical producer/researcher Rebecca Richardson, who’s been named a 2024 Rising Star by Current, the trade publication for public media. She’s also authored many informative posts and articles about classical music on All Classical’s website.

• Our last news wrap recounted the already-abundant musical achievements of Lakeridge High School sophomore composer/trombonist Elaina Stuppler, and that list now also includes All Classical Portland’s 2024 Young Artist in Residence, where she’ll help create content for the station’s digital channels. The station also announced its newest crop of Young Artist Ambassadors: 18-year-old pianist and cellist Cyrus Ngan (Clackamas High School), 17-year-old bassoonist and clarinetist Katelyn Nguyen (Parkrose High School), 17-year-old French hornist and koto player Haruka Sakiyama (West Linn High School), and 16-year-old classical guitarist Anika Gupta (Sunset High School).

• ArtsWatch broke the story of All Classical’s move (now in progress) from the Portland Opera building (see above) to downtown Portland, and the station this year received a $750,000 grant from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, to support building its new headquarters in KOIN Tower.

• In other radio reports, Community Growth Radio in Vancouver Washington has added online streams of arts and culture programming for blind and disabled listeners in Oregon and Washington. 

• “If you search slippedisc.com for ‘Oregon’ you will find a catalogue of musical incompetence unmatched in any other US university,” wrote notorious classical music gadfly Norman Lebrecht, who picked up on a July Eugene Weekly report about last month’s surprise departure of the University of Oregon’s KWAX Radio Music Director Peter van de Graaff. He’s one of several figures in Oregon classical radio with an international profile (at least in the classical music bubble), thanks to his dulcet bass-baritone voice’s reassuring nightly presence on a major national radio network — in this case, Beethoven Network, whose overnight broadcasts resound over about 150 radio stations around the world. 

According to Eugene-based ArtsWatch contributor Tom Manoff, van de Graaff (also a noted opera singer) was an important contributor to Eugene’s arts scene during his eight-year tenure since moving to KWAX from Chicago’s WFMT. “His voice is inviting but not elitist,” Manoff, the former NPR classical music editor and author, told ArtsWatch. “He’s a knowledgeable musician, and that shows in his programming.” He also performed with Eugene’s old-time radio revival theater company Radio Redux.

Lebrecht, who has roundly lambasted the recent string of controversies at another UO classical music institution, the Oregon Bach Festival, didn’t unearth any scandal this time — but hinted darkly that more must lie behind the move than what van de Graaff told Eugene Weekly. “Van de Graaff said in an email to EW that he’s moving to Wisconsin in part to help an ailing father,” the Weekly’s story reads. “’There are many other reasons, some of which are not fit for publication, so I’ll have to say “no comment” to anything further,’ he wrote.” KWAX will continue to air the Beethoven Network. 

Arrivals & Departures

• Eugene Opera hired Eugene arts administrator, actor, and director Kari Welch as its new executive director, and renewed current Artistic Director and Chief Conductor Andrew Bisantz’s contract through 2026-27. While continuing his 16-year relationship with the company, he’ll also continue his other job, begun last year, as Principal Opera Conductor and Professor of Conducting at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

• Another of the city’s major music institutions, Eugene Symphony, announced the appointment of its new executive director, Dave Moss, who comes to Oregon from his previous position as President and CEO of the Hawai’i Symphony Orchestra. 

• Back in Portland, Third Angle New Music welcomed back its former communication director, Evan Lewis, this time as its new Executive Director. In the interim, he worked in educational fundraising at Portland’s Catlin Gabel School. Lewis is also a composer whose graduate school mentors included prizewinning American composers Jennifer Higdon and Paul Moravec. 

• And in case you didn’t get enough opera news above, Artswatch also welcomes still another Oregon operatic arrival, New Wave Opera, and looks forward to telling readers all about its upcoming inaugural season. 

• Another welcome addition to Oregon’s music scene: Lewis & Clark College’s new music colloquium featuring free talks twice a year. You can stream last spring’s inaugural event, featuring author, music scholar and former Portland indie rocker Marianna Ritchey, who’s now Associate Professor of Music History at University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

• And a belated welcome to ChatterPDX, a new weekly performing arts series that began in June and includes chamber music, spoken word, and coffee for an hour every Sunday at 10:30am. 

• Though the name is new, the orchestra isn’t: The 41-year-old Portland Columbia Symphony Orchestra has changed its name to the much cooler and more accurate Orchestra Nova Northwest, and is adding performances in North Portland to its existing concerts at Beaverton’s Patricia Reser Center for the Arts and in Troutdale and Gresham. Music Director Steven Byess has also extended his contract through the 2029-30 season.

• James DePreist, who led the Oregon Symphony for 23 years beginning in 1980, is the subject of a new memoir written by his widow, Ginette DePreist. Here’s an interview with her about the book.

• A group of Oregon classical musicians is lamenting another departure: musical materials at Multnomah County’s newly revamped Central Library, which eliminated taller shelves to increase visibility (and prevent illegal drug use), replaced more traditional study arrangements with internet stations and made other changes in keeping with the library’s evolving role in the community. But the group–which includes former Astoria Music Festival and Opera in the Park conductor Keith Clark, Cascadia Composer Jack Gabel, and composer and March Music Moderne honcho Bob Priest–objects to some of the changes, which they say makes it more difficult to access and research music. They call for the return of former work tables, chairs and study infrastructure, and restoration of shelves to their original height (78-80 inches), reference librarian work stations, reference volumes to their shelving of the walls of the music room, and all musical scores and books on music to their respective shelves. In April, the group held a news conference and in May, one member held a “Memorial Service for books, musical scores, study infrastructure and written materials no longer of use in Central Library Collection.” The story was picked up by Portland’s KOIN TV. 

• And here’s one more sad departure. One of Portland’s finest classical pianists, Janet Coleman, died July 6. A memorial service will be held Saturday in Newberg. Our condolences to her friends and family, including her husband, prominent Portland violinist Adam LaMotte. 

Praise & Plaudits

• Portland’s Chamber Music Northwest received a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts to support its just-concluded summer festival — its tenth such NEA grant in a row.

• Portland-based songwriter Jenn Grinels was selected as the inaugural writer in residence for the Emerging Writers Residency at Circle in the Square Theatre School in New York City. The prestigious institution, whose alums include Idina Menzel, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Lady Gaga and many others, gives Grinels the opportunity to workshop her new folk/Americana musical (provisionally titled The Rosetta Project: Wakeman) and present it to an invited audience on the Broadway stage at Circle in the Square. A concert version, originally produced in conjunction with Portland’s Bridgetown Conservatory, won the 2021 Broadway World Regional Award for Best Musical.

• Oregonians know Portland-based director/visual designer/animator/installation artist Rose Bond for her many collaborative projects with arts institutions including Portland Chinatown Museum and Oregon Symphony concerts. But her work has appeared all over the world — including, on August 28 at the prestigious Venice Film Festival, her new Earths to Come. A collaboration with the Grammy-winning vocal band Roomful of Teeth, rising composer inti figgis-vizueta, and Oscar-winning creative producer Melanie Coombs, the production reflects Bond’s innovative approach to complementing music with imagery.

• Portland jazz journalism eminence and occasional ArtsWatch contributor Lynn Darroch will receive the second Nick Fish Community Jazz Award this month at Montavilla Jazz Festival. The author, radio host and artist will be presented with the prize at Joe Kye’s The Well Sessions concert featuring Shin Yu Pai on Saturday, August 31 at the Alberta Rose Theatre. 

“I have seen Lynn Darroch offer something invaluable to jazz lovers in Portland—the stories that help us see ourselves as a community in cooperation,” wrote former Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble Executive Director Douglas Detrick in a testimonial. “Jazz is a tough business, and we’re incredibly lucky to have someone that can watch and listen with the sensitivity, enthusiasm and deep knowledge that Lynn offers.” Stay tuned for Lynn’s own ArtsWatch story about the festival soon.

• The Oregon Symphony presented the $10,000 2024 Schnitzer Wonder Award to Fear No Music’s Young Composers Project at the orchestra’s annual Celebration Concert, which featured music by YCP students. (Read ArtsWatch’s 25th anniversary story about the project.)

• One YCP alumnus quoted in that story, Bend-based composer Chris Thomas, just won the 2024 American Prize in Composition, Pops/Light Music division, for his composition Imagine Symphony Live.

• Portland composer/bassist/jazz musician esperanza spalding is one of five recipients of the 2024 Doris Duke Artist Awards, the largest ($525,000 in unrestricted funds) prize in the United States specifically dedicated to individual performing artists. One of the other winners is erstwhile Oregonian Nataki Garrett, the former Oregon Shakespeare Festival artistic director.

We’ll leave you with this recent glorious live performance, by spalding and the legendary “epic, intergalactic” singer Milton Nascimento, recorded from his home in Brazil, between telenovela-watching sessions, in the wake of the pair’s enchanting new album. 

Most information supplied by the subjects. Got more news about Oregon music that might interest our readers? Transmit it to music@orartswatch.org.