Today, dear reader, we begin by pondering a Commonwealth holiday that would probably benefit other countries of the West: We refer, of course, to Boxing Day. If you’re lucky enough to know any Canadians or Australians, you probably know about this one. It’s when we pack up all the Christmas crap and put it away until next year — hence the name. (You thought it had something to do with boxers, didn’t you?)

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2024: A Year in Review

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Kidding! Historically, today is the day when boxes of Christmas gifts were given to employees by the rich folks who insisted upon their service on the holiday itself, but let them have a day off with their families the next day. Generous! More generally, the box in question can be the alms boxes where donations for the poor were collected. And yes, there are a variety of sporting events — including, sometimes, boxing (the kind with gloves and gambling and concussions).

The day is also celebrated as Saint Stephen’s Day, to commemorate the first Christian martyr (second, if you count Christ Himself). If you know your Bible, you remember Stephen as the man Saint Paul helped stone to death for blasphemy, back when he was just Saul, before the whole “Damascus Road” conversion experience.

In Gaelic lands — specifically Ireland — today is also Wren Day. That looks like this:

And there’s even a song that goes with it:

The wren the wren the king of all birds
St Stephen’s Day was caught in the furze
Her clothes were all torn
Her shoes were all worn
Up with the kettle and down with the pan
Give us a penny to bury the “wran”
If you haven’t a penny, a halfpenny will do
If you haven’t a halfpenny, God bless you!

And that sounds like this:

In the commercial backwaters of the Modern Secular Far West (that means you), today’s “Boxing Day” is simply the day you sit around on your phone and order crap online, taking advantage of post-Christmas sales to spend gift cards and buy more boxes full of stuff to fill up your house (which, as George Carlin noted, is just another box). Bah humbug!

Anyways, whatever the details of the day, and whatever the specifics of the year ahead, which we know for sure is going to be A Weird One, this is as good a time as any for looking over the year that ends next week and putting it all solidly behind us as we move into Winter and The Future.

Today, that means our annual year-end roundup of Oregon ArtsWatch stories — not all of them, of course, because the map is not the territory, but a representative sampling. This year we’re going to do that by considering the story of music, as told by the dozen-odd music journalists who cover Music In Oregon for our humble online journal of arts and culture.

The story of music

The story of music is not only the story of music itself, and the stories of musicians and listeners, but of places and institutions and traditions. We have an acute sense of physical place, here in Oregon, and it’s a sense which is always under some degree of threat, sought or unsought, from its virtual competition. Yet this competition is also a cooperation, in the sense that “virtual” doesn’t just mean “online” but also means “non-material, with power in and over the material.” You can’t have “virtual” without “virtue,” which, after all, simply means “courage” (more or less). A tradition is a kind of virtual space; so is an institution, like a church or an academy. These are the spirits which inhabit our physical spaces as light inhabits a flame. Consider this old chestnut: If you extinguish a candle and then relight it, is it the same flame or a different flame? If your church moves to a new building, is it the same church? If your college is invisible, is it still a college?

And, of course, you are reading this “virtually,” which is to say “online.” You’re over there, I’m over here, and yet we’re in the same “place” discussing the same thing.

Anyways, what all this means when we talk about the story of music is simply that while music Exists (in the Platonic sense) it must exist Somewhere, Somehow. There must be a medium not only of transmission but of continuity, of durability.

Which brings us to this: Most of the stories we told here at ArtsWatch this year were about musicians and audiences bonding and developing together over time; about the physical and virtual spaces where music and musicians are made; about the traditions and the technologies that keep the flame burning. We wrote about educators and schools; about interdisciplinary collaborations; about studios for performing and broadcasting and recording music; about the various ways music becomes embodied.

“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture,” said some anonymous wag. “I call architecture frozen music,” said Goethe. That goes both ways: “music is liquid architecture.” Music flows, and we flow with it. Homer’s Odyssey opens with a line that Robert Fitzgerald translated thusly:

Sing in me, Muse, and through me tell the story

Writing and sounding together

This year started with last year, and that’s where we begin today. The first story of 2024 was James Bash’s report on Portland Youth Philharmonic’s all-ages Concert-At-Christmas in December 2023 (this year’s party happens December 26–that’s tonight, if you’re reading this on Boxing Day). The same week, photojournalist extraordinaire Joe Cantrell had been at The Reser to capture Portland Chamber Orchestra’s New Year’s Eve festivities. Those looked like this:

And this:

And this:

And this:

(Check out the whole thing here.)

Many of the year’s stories involved writers working together, even if they were working separately; sometimes they were writing about musicians working with dancers, or writers, or what have you. The most intense of these was our coverage of Rachmaninoff’s Vespers, performed in January by Portland Symphonic Choir and the push/FOLD Dance Company.

It’s not quite “dancing about architecture,” but it struck all of us as an odd choice of music to consider for choreography.

Choral correspondent Daryl Browne had the story both before (how’s that going to work?) and after (how did it turn out?); in between, dance correspondent Lindsay Dreyer considered the collaboration from the movement side of the equation (read that here).

Two other stories were started by Daryl and bookended by other writers. In March, Daryl wrote about an at-the-time-upcoming collaboration between Resonance Ensemble, Darrell Grant, A. Mimi Sei, and Taylor Stewart (read that here); later that month, Angela Allen wrote an extensive and insightful report on the resulting concert (read that here, with photos by Joe, who was, as ever, everywhere).

In April, Daryl visited Camas High School to investigate a collaboration between their choirs, led by Ethan Chassin, and composer-poet Alicia Jo Rabins (read that here); the same month, Amanda Waldroupe reported on Rabins’ video series Girls In Trouble (read that here).

In August, Amanda contributed a detailed overview of the life’s work of musician and music educator Scott Tuomi, who retired from Pacific University this year (read that here). It was one of several such profiles we’ve run on musicians, music educators, music administrators, and so on. James contributed several this year; our two favorites of his were the profiles of Oregon Symphony music librarian Joy Fabos and of all-around badass Coty Raven Morris.

We ran several stories by local author and radio host Lynn Darroch, a hero of Oregon’s jazz world (this year he literally won an award called “Portland Jazz Hero,” and was the second recipient of Montavilla Jazz’s Nick Fish Jazz Community Award). Again we had two favorites: This look into the Alan Jones Academy of Music (another place where musicians are made), run by the infamousy barefoot drummer; and this deliciously deep story on the Albina Music Trust’s treasure house of Black Music History.

Senior editor Brett Campbell always has rather more cooking than anyone can actually keep up with, from January’s Oregon Bach Festival news to last week’s Hard Boiled Eggnog feature. In between, he writes plays and writes about plays and grumbles and swims as often as he can. It’s not too surprising that the three stories of Brett’s that most stood out this year (to the present editor, at least) were word-themed stories.

In February, Brett paid homage to the writer and teacher who brought him to Oregon from Texas, in the antediluvian year [redacted]: Jon Franklin, who passed away this year at 82 (may we all be so blessed). If you’ve ever wondered how Brett works his magic, look no further.

A couple of months back, Brett wrote a two-parter focused on two of Oregon’s finest locavore musical institutions, Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble and Cascadia Composers. The former, a collective of jazz musicians that presents primarily as a music label (check out their astounding catalogue here) partnered with Literary Arts for this year’s Portland Book Festival to present a concert of compositions inspired by Oregon books (read part one here).

The latter, the local chapter of the National Association of Composers, USA, has always had a collaborative bent. This season, they got together with a quartet of Oregon poets laureate for a concert with the characteristically punny name “Fearless Lieder.” For this profile, Brett chatted with current Cascadia president Kevin Lay and Cascadia’s treasurer, Jeff Winslow, a charmingly bearded irregular ArtsWatch contributor (read part two here).

Continuity

Another thing we love doing here: Following the same beat, in some cases the same institution, across multiple concerts, multiple seasons, multiple incarnations. Sometimes that’s several writers on the same festival or organization, as in our ongoing coverage of Chamber Music Northwest, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, Oregon Bach Festival, William Byrd Festival, Resonance Ensemble, Third Angle New Music, 45th Parallel Universe, Makrokosmos Project, and so on.

It’s hard to pick just one — or is it? This summer, amidst the annual overwhelm of Chamber Music Northwest, Alice Hardesty found time to chat with this year’s Protégé Project string quartet, Opus13; read that right here. Also this summer, Charles Rose went to Makrokosmos X and became, if only fleetingly, Part of the Story:

Sometimes “continuity” can be a run of stories dedicated not just to one group but to one specific story arc, as with Fear No Music and their current Locally Sourced Sounds season — read stories on that work-in-progress from James (Generations), Lorin Wilkerson (Sounds Like Home), and Yours Truly (Catching up with Kenji Bunch). Joe has captured a lot of this too, culminating most recently in a photo essay featuring FNM executive director and pianist Monica Ohuchi (check that out in all its glory right here).

This spring, Joe and his camera captured the eleventh season of Classical Up Close, an annual tradition started by Oregon Symphony musicians who wanted to play out in the community. This year they were at the old All Classical Radio studio for Thursdays@Three; at Powell’s City of Books; at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in Beaverton; and, well, sort of all over the place. You can also read more about the whole smorgasbord in James’ multi-concert report right here.

Sometimes continuity means one writer on a single beat, a good example of which is Angela’s opera coverage, which extends beyond Oregon to include operas staged in Seattle (X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X) and San Francisco (The Handmaid’s Tale). Because “opera” means “works” — and that includes not just music-and-words but also acting, set design, costumes, etcetera ad infinitum — it takes a special kind of writer to highlight what makes any given production special. This is something Angela excels at, with bonus points to the various opera companies for always providing superlative production photos.

This year we particularly enjoyed Angela’s take on Portland State University’s production of The Merry Widow, an operatic warhorse staged and reviewed in May of this year (“last year,” in academese). Read that here, take in all the lovely photos, and consider the ways in which the entity “PSU Opera” represents a place, a tradition, and an institution, all in one.

A new tradition within this old tradition is represented by New Wave Opera and Renegade Opera, a pair of youngish Oregon companies busy queering the whole idea of opera while claiming the institution for its own. NWO has a “place,” sort of — Raven’s Manor, where they’ve already staged a handful of operas and operettas and micro-operas (read about those in Charles’ reports here and here).

Renegade Opera neither has nor needs a specific place, because their home is your mind. They’ll perform their immersive brouhahas anywhere they can, wherever seems appropriate to the production at hand. In two stories written this year by Lorin, who has been covering RO since he started writing for ArtsWatch, the eager troupe took their breathtakingly varied productions to Northwest Children’s Theatre’s home turf The Judy (for the warped Strauss update Orlofsky’s Party) and to the Center for Native Arts and Cultures, aka the former Yale Union Building (for their “Artist in Conversation Stage(s)” double-header Little Ones and The Raven).

“Continuity” also means focusing on structures that enable continuity. That can mean schools and churches, of course, and the various institutions and traditions and so on which we’ve already mentioned. It can also mean the continuity of an institution from one physical location to another, a recent instance of which you can read about in Daryl’s profile of All Classical’s move to the KOIN Tower and the new choral series commemorating one of the station’s prime movers, Roger O. Doyle (read that here). Another type of music technology — the recording studio — received a near-eulogy in Charles’ report on Bill Oskay’s Big Red Studios, which you can read here.

“Continuity” can also mean remembrance, as in all the times we’ve remembered musicians and music enthusiasts who’ve passed on to the next life and now exist on this plane primarily as memories. Nowhere was that more striking this year than in the case of Gary Ferrington, a Eugene author and ArtsWatch contributor who penned this beautiful ode to listening shortly before his passing this summer (read Brett Campbell’s memorial here).

We’d like to share the beautiful closing lines of Gary’s piece:

On this World Listening Day, I encourage readers to close their eyes and listen. What sounds do you hear nearby? What about in the distance? Do any of these sounds convey a particular message? Are there sounds you enjoy or strongly dislike? What is it about these sounds that attracts or repels your interest? Is there a sound that you might identify as a soundmark for your community, like a cathedral bell or foghorn?

What if every day were World Listening Day?

And then there are the times when we focus on one specific composer for years on end. Earlier this year, when the present author interviewed Caroline Shaw and her partner Danni Lee, it was only the latest in a long series of stories about the Pulitzer-winning, moss-loving, newly-Oregonian composer. Later in the year, we ran three separate stories centered on just the latest work from another newly-Oregonian composer whom we’ve been following for damn near a decade now: Andy Akiho, whose recent cello concerto Nisei provoked this interview, this profoundly moving concert reflection from Lorin, and this memoir-disguised-as-music-journalism.

And that brings us to the end of our year-end journey. What do we love most in Oregon music? We — that is, I — must admit a composerly bias. I love talking to composers, and I love it when the rest of the team talks with composers. These folks are the deep storytellers, and often enough they’re performers, too, and educators, and administrators, and the founders of schools and companies and institutions, the instigators of traditions.

My favorite profile of the year was Charles’ monumental conversation with composer-pianist-educator-administrator Ryan Francis, alumnus and operations director of Fear No Music’s Young Composers Project. Brew yourself a pot of strong coffee and dive into that mindfeast right here.

Signing off

Why yes, dear reader, I did have a favorite story of my own this year; thanks for asking! It wasn’t either of my two rants (The Trouble with Music and Give Thanks for the Music), although I am inordinately fond of rants. Neither was it my two-part roundup of Oregon orchestras (Portland and Around the State), which will surely never be complete.

No, my favorite was this conversation with Deena T. Grossman. When you read it, don’t just read it — listen to the music.

So. What’s up for next year? More of the same, of course! The next concert in that FNM season is right around the corner, Akiho’s playing with 45|| the same weekend, Shaw and Lee are hooking up with Resonance in February, and before you know it Oregon Symphony will be playing Nancy Ives. It looks like a good year for the Oregon School of Composition — and for everybody else.

We’ll see you next year, folks. Best of luck with the boxing!