Oh now I see. I’ll expect to hear more about the French thanks to the Oregon Symphony in May… maybe leading to a teaser about the Widmann family, and Chamber Music NW this summer?

Yes, I got carried away about Chopin. It’s easy to get carried away by Chopin… and yes, Brahms. But no, despite being hard to outdo among DWEMs who lived entirely in the 19th century, not renowned for their orchestral prowess.

Haaaaaaaa, of course it’s all Hannah’s fault! Thanks for the intel Bob.

Word salad is an excellent source of fiber. Good for the digestion. Keeps the heart young and the mind limber.

“Virtue-signaling” is such a funny little phrase. I’m used to seeing it lobbed around by anti-woke types trying to cast doubt on the sincerity of a Black Lives Matter sign on somebody’s lawn, or a rainbow flag in their profile pic, or pronouns in their bio, or whatever. Honestly I’ve never been able to follow the ins and outs of the argument. Which “virtue” do you imagine is being “signaled” here? Temperance?

In any case I can assure you that a love of Bach and Beethoven and Brahms and all the rest requires no apology at all.

Cheers!

Ha, Jeff, I was hoping you’d be mollified by my inclusion of Brahms.

True that I might have mentioned Debussy….or Messiaen or Franck or Ravel or Milhaud, et alia. Same goes for Rodrigo, de Falla, Holst, Britten, Handel….the list goes on and on and on and on and on, which is The Problem Itself (and is distinctly a problem when you’re trying to keep a monthly column under 2000 words). The Italians, God Bless Em, are really only good at operas and film soundtracks, though of course that’s not nothing.

Anyways, if anyone in Oregon were playing any of these Europeans’ orchestral music this month they surely would’ve merited a shout out.

As for Chopin…well, we are specifically talking about orchestra music here, hardly the man’s forte.

BTW, when Cascadia Composers was casting about for a dazzlingly gifted coloratura to render Ligeti’s “charming little ditty” with sufficiently crazed authority, it was none other than Hannah Penn herself that recommended Maddy while guaranteeing; “You will LOVE her!” True dat, molto thanxo, dear Hannah!!

You’ve covered about half the required DWEMs. Now it’s time for the French – including the Pole Chopin, who was French enough to be revered by none other than “musicien français” Debussy – the Flemish, the Spanish, some Irish, Angles and Saxons (but nobody too Germanic), not to mention Italians, who used to be more western before the same geologic processes that created the Alps moved them easterly. Very technically speaking.

PORTLAND’S EAST SIDE, NAMELY LLOYD CENTER, POSSIBLY IS A BETTER LOCATION FOR A CIVIC AUDITORIUM…LLOYD CENTER IS ALREADY ESTABLISHED AS AN IMPORTANT TRANSIT HUB. . AS FOR THE KELLER…PERHAPS THE OUTER SHELL OF THE BUILDING COULD BE STRENGTHENED? THE INTERIOR GUTTED, THE CEILING GLASSED AND THE RESULTANT ATRIUM DEPLOYED AS A PUB LIC MARKET?

It would also be nice if they had subscriptions to most of the best STEM academic journals, although I realize that might be too costly. (And they might have journals, I don’t know for sure.)

I need to make a correction: David Balsley, who danced with Margaret Jenkins’ company in San Francisco for many years, is not one of GB’s students and Stephanie Schaaf took some classes from him a while ago (I watched a couple of them) but isn’t one of his regulars.

Brian, I would add that my daughter and son-in-law, who found the painting in the basement of my former home, and John Goodwin, whom we all met after the Ursula Le Guin commemorative stamp ceremony, at which I was a speaker, had a great deal to do with the donation of this painting to PAM.

Thank you for this wonderful article and for your incredible generosity. Our Museum and community are forever grateful!

And, Nina, thank you for your work on this significant painting. The result is excellent. We are fortunate to have you in Portland.

Brian Ferriso
Director
Portland Art Museum

The director’s position at the Netherlands Bach Society is vacant because van Veldhoven’s successor, Shunsuke Sato, stepped down this past summer.

Thanks, Elizabeth. Done!

Great read overall.

Best,
Juan S.

Ha! That sounds like a perfectly rational response. It’s customary at the end of any horrifying ordeal to applaud the triumphant heroes and boo the defeated villain.

Without either the means nor travel capability given stolen car to venture far beyond these northwestern regions of the state of Oregon territory, while always looking to indie small theater to measure my love of all the other story-telling based performing and recording arts I am especially appreciative of this overview by stage critic Brett Campbell, whose similarly incisive reviews of all sorts of music I am more familiar with from his essays here in Oregon Arts Watch and other regional publications.

This is such an illustrative clinic in context across the stage-play material covered and critiqued in process, with the added bonus of Brett Campbell showing more than telling the expressive deficiencies\sins of telling more than showing in a unified creative work and the primary shortcoming in any narrative arts format.

Here’s to a year of greater socio-economic and Political Economic stability across our shared lands, resources and boundaries. Keep on doing at such a useful and wonderful level to the wonderful staff producing Oregon Arts Watch and Oregon Arts artists and collaborators in action. No creator(s)\collaborator(s) venturing expression at any level is truly communicating without there being a caring enough audience to Watch and human seekers willing to communicate and critique the internalized human cathartic response to stage craft. Let the bewilderment continue apace…

For next year, may the Community Radio arts be included in such caring and thoughtful essay and journalistic coverage…We are blessed in the state of Oregon with creative public community college (KMHD), university and KBOO community radio bandwidth, not to mention access to all such public radio broadcasters archiving creative aural works online to the far edges of Cyberia. Long may they play and beam…

Mitch Ritter\Paradigm Sifters, Code Shifters, PsalmSong Chasers
Lay-Low Studios, Ore-Wa (Refuge of Atonement Seekers)
Media Discussion List\LookseeInnerEarsHearHere

Hello and thank you Alberto! Good to have these pieces of the story: yes I too remember the amiable and earnest young person he was. And the horrendous losses those kids faced, so early in their lives.

Thanks for bringing Antero Alli’s death to our attention. He was born in Helsinki, Finland, and lived and worked in the San Francisco Bay Area for many years before moving to Portland in 2015.

Here’s a link to his Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antero_Alli

And here’s a link to his own website: https://www.paratheatrical.com/pages/bio.html

And some links to ArtsWatch stories on Alli and his work in Portland:

https://archive.orartswatch.org/soror-mystica-review-breaking-the-frame/

https://archive.orartswatch.org/bardoville-review-bukowski-in-bardoville/

Would you say the same if the story and text had been, “Tom struggled with cancer, and it took his life in the end.”? Alcoholism is a disease, and to suggest that it not be mentioned because it somehow diminishes the life and accomplishments comes out of a view that alcoholism is a moral failing. It is not.

In favor of that! (Just wait ’til tomorrow’s big 2023 wrapup.)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/2023/03/26/roger-sharpe-man-who-saved-pinball/