Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
Waterfront Blues Festival

Kicking it off: Waterfront Blues Day 1

The blues festival, a downtown summer highlight since 1988, lays down its groove through July Fourth. Photographer Joe Cantrell captures Saturday’s opening-day action.

Blues Fest Day 4: Light Up the Sky

The 2022 Waterfront Blues Festival goes out with a fireworks bang on the Fourth of July. Photographer Joe Cantrell catches the action on the festival’s fourth and final day.

Blues Fest Day 3: Skeletons on parade

On Sunday at the Waterfront Blues Festival, Mysti Krewe’s bones rattle, Taj Mahal headlines, LaRhonda Steele soars, and much more. Photographer Joe Cantrell captures the spirit of it all.

Blues Fest Day 2: Dance to the Music

As the music plays on the second day of Portland’s big blues bash on the waterfront, the feet start moving to the beat – and photographer Joe Cantrell captures the action.

Back to the blues on the Waterfront

The Waterfront Blues Festival, back full force after Covid slowdowns, brings back the beat through the Fourth of July. Photographer Joe Cantrell snaps highlights from Day One.

Fighting the one-two punch

ArtsWatch Weekly: Amid twin crises, arts and social awareness mix and meld and come together.

Blues minus the Waterfront

Minus the big crowds and the riverside, the Blues Festival rethinks itself – and the beat goes on.

Summer Streams

Chamber Music Northwest, Oregon Bach Fest lead parade of summer shows from onstage to online.

Blues finale: a festival with teeth

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL When the extraordinary young guitarist Christone “Kingfish” Ingram waded into the crowd at the Waterfront Blues Festival on Sunday and started picking the strings with his teeth, you knew the whole darned party was gettin’ down. Musicians, fans,

Blues Fest 3: Let the good times roll

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL A lot of Louisiana took the stage on Saturday in Day Three of the Waterfront Blues Festival – groups as redolent of New Orleans and bayou country as Curley Taylor & Zydeco Trouble, Lil’ Pookie & the Zydeco

Waterfront Blues 2: In the Spirit

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL Day Two of the Waterfront Blues Festival dug deep into the spirit of music and life with an extraordinary set by the Spiritual Brothers and their sounds of Northern Ghana and Burkina Faso. Unlike the four-day festival’s first

Waterfront Blues: a bang-up start

PHOTOGRAPHS BY JOE CANTRELL It was a bang-up day on the Fourth of July in Portland’s Tom McCall Waterfront Park, where this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival got off to a high-flying start and, come night time, a rainbow of fireworks lit up

MusicWatch Monthly: Too many notes

La Finta GiardinieraJuly 12-27, Newmark TheaterIn The Penal ColonyJuly 26-August 10, Hampton Opera Center It’s oddly appropriate that Portland Opera is closing its season with summer performances of Mozart and Philip Glass. Both composers are that rare breed: equally adept at performing

Oregon Music 2018: looking outward

Last year’s music roundup first looked homeward. ArtsWatch’s 2017 music coverage focused, as we have from the outset, on our state’s creative culture: music conceived and composed in Oregon. We touched a lot of other bases, too of course, and homegrown music

Now see this: a year in pictures

By SARAH KREMEN-HICKS Writers do tend to go on a bit, don’t we? Maybe we ought to step back now and then, put the pens down, and let the pictures tell the story. In the following photo essays from 2018, ArtsWatch’s photographers

Waterfront Blues Festival: The End

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell How to characterize the last day of this year’s Waterfront Blues Festival? Traditionally the festival has ended with the fireworks, late night on the 4th of July, but this year we began with Wednesday, the 4th. Thursday sustained, Friday found

Waterfront Blues Festival: Day 2

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell The 4th of July with fireworks draws crowds big enough for the fire marshal to shut down the entrances, and that has traditionally been the last of the Waterfront Blues Festival. But this year it was

Photo First: glorious blue Fourth

Photographs and Story by Joe Cantrell Nothing defines the best of Portland’s funk art scene like the Waterfront Blues Festival, currently in its 31st year. Aside from the mission to raise money and canned food for the Oregon Food Bank, other than

MusicWatch Weekly: passions and improvisations

J.S. Bach’s two surviving Passions (St. Matthew and St. John) remain pinnacles of Western music, more than a quarter millennium after he constructed them. Neither is on the program at this year’s Oregon Bach Festival, but this summer, Oregon does offer a

Triangle Productions Perfect Arrangement Portland Oregon
Oregon Repertory Singers Finding Light 50th Season Portland Oregon
Portland Playhouse Passing Strange Portland Oregon
Literary Arts Oregon Book Awards Portland Center Stage at the Armory Portland Oregon
Imago Theatre Carol Triffle Mission Gibbons Portland Oregon
Bonnie Bronson 2024 Fellow Wendy Red Star Reed College Reception Kaul Auditorium Foyer Portland Oregon
City of Hillsboro Walters Cultural Arts Center Tony Furtado Hillsboro Oregon
Kalakendra Indian Classical Instrumental Music First Congregational Church Portland Oregon
Portland Center Stage at the Armory Nassim Portland Oregon
Maryhill Museum of Art Goldendale Washington
Portland State University College of the Arts
Golden Road Arts Grey Raven Gallery Near the Reser Beaverton Oregon
Pacific Maritime Heritage Center Prosperity of the Sea Lincoln County Historical Society Newport Oregon Coast
PassinArt Theatre and Portland Playhouse present Yohen Brunish Theatre Portland Oregon
Northwest Dance Project Sarah Slipper Newmark Theatre Portland Oregon
Newport Performance and Visual Arts Centers Newport Oregon Coast
Portland Art Museum Virtual Sneakers to Cutting Edge Kicks Portland Oregon
High Desert Museum Sasquatch Central Oregon
Oregon Cultural Trust donate
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