Posted in Portland, OR, tagged Portland Piano Festival on July 24, 2008 | No Comments »
Last week, I attended several concerts at Portland Piano International’s Summer Festival and then wrote an article for Crosscut. You can read it here.
Although I did not attend Fredric Chiu’s concert, I did hear him present an unusual demonstration-lecture (July 19) in which he explained techniques for practicing without a keyboard. Chiu handed out a [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on July 17, 2008 | No Comments »
Simone Dinnerstein, a featured artist at Portland Piano International’s Summer Festival, has taken a most unusual route to become one of the hottest pianists on the planet. Just three years ago at the age of 33, Dinnerstein raised enough money to record Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” and produce a recital debut at Carnegie Hall. The resulting [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on July 15, 2008 | No Comments »
I know that some folks have a problem with Arnold Schoenberg’s 12-tone pieces, but projectile vomit is not something that I usually associate with his music. Yesterday evening (Saturday, July 12th at Kaul Auditorium), I attended a special Chamber Music Northwest concert that celebrated the 30 years of performing that cellist extaordinaire, Fred Sherry, has [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on July 3, 2008 | No Comments »
Finally, some positive news for classical music critics!
Accoring to a report in Musical America, Anne Midgette has been hired by the Washington Post as the staff classical music critic. Midgette has been the interim critic since Tim Page took a buyout a couple of months ago.
Midgette is a native of Portland, Oregon.
Posted in Portland, OR on June 28, 2008 | No Comments »
After 27 years of successfully offering classical music in Bend, Oregon, the Cascade Festival of Music has decided to fold and file for bankruptcy. According to the Bend Bulletin newspaper, the festival ended last fall with $190,000 in debt and successfully reduced that to $93,000. You would think that with all of the new money [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on June 28, 2008 | No Comments »
David Hattner is the new music director and conductor of the Portland Youth Philharmonic, making him only the 5th person to hold this position with the nation’s oldest youth orchestra (established in 1924 as the Portland Junior Symphony Association). Hattner beat 111 other applicants for the job in an evaluation process that took eight months [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on June 20, 2008 | No Comments »
Richard Nixon’s trip to China in 1972 was an event of historic proportions, especially for a politician who was thoroughly opposed to communism right down to the blood cells of his bone marrow. The opera “Nixon in China,” written by John Adams, retells the story of Nixon’s trip to China, mixing the public aspects of [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on June 19, 2008 | No Comments »
Horsley has just informed his fellow MCANA (Music Critics Association of North America) members that his position at the Kansas City Star has been eliminated. The Kansas City Star is part of the McClatchy newspaper chain. To read about the layoffs, click here. Horsley is on the board of the MCANA.
Posted in Portland, OR on June 19, 2008 | 1 Comment »
At the classical music critics conference in Denver last week, I heard an interesting panel discussion of “what happens when a critic is perceived to have an agenda, negative or positive; how that critic is perceived by performers, presenters, press representatives; and questions of tone, responsibility and fairness.” The panelists were Mary Lou Falcone of [...]
Posted in Portland, OR on June 19, 2008 | No Comments »
The thought ‘I am right and you are wrong’ is a motivating factor in human deeds and misdeeds from the earliest of times, and in “The Rape of Lucretia,” a powerful opera by Benjamin Britten, the misdeed prevails and wreaks terrible havoc. The opera retells a piece of history dating back to ancient Rome in [...]
