Portland Spoke – The Official Blog of Travel Portland

Here are some of Portland’s music highlights for September and October (see visual arts and performing arts highlights):

Portland’s classical music scene has several areas of strength, including the Oregon Symphony Orchestra under the baton of maestro Carlos Kalmar, numerous groups devoted to new music, and several more delving deeply into chamber and early music. And it’s a highly participatory scene, too — your neighbor at a concert is likely to be a musician, too.

“The Bard Sings”
Resonance Ensemble
Oct. 27 (Agnes Flanagan Chapel Lewis & Clark College, 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Road) and Oct. 28 (First Presbyterian Church, 1200 S.W. Alder St.)

The top-notch professional chorus sings settings of Shakespeare texts.

Gerhardt Plays Tchaikovsky
Oct. 27 & 29
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

The title work, featuring the return of Portland favorite Alban Gerhardt, this time playing the Russian romantic composer’s cello Variations on a Rococo Theme, isn’t even the best part of this concert, which also features a suite from Sergey Prokofiev’s great 20th century ballet Romeo and Juliet and the 1999 breakthrough work by one of the 21st century’s leading composers, English star Thomas Ades’s Asyla.

Paul Lewis
Oct. 22
Gerding Theater at the Armory, 128 N.W. 11th Ave.

In this Portland Piano International recital, the renowned pianist plays some of the doomed composer Franz Schubert’s last masterpieces.

Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespers
Oct. 21
Portland Baroque Orchestra, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, 147 N.W. 19th Ave.

Stephen Stubbs and Pacific Musicworks with Les Voix Baroques, some of North America’s most accomplished early music experts, perform one of the first masterpieces of the Baroque era and one of the greatest of all choral orchestral works, Claudio Monteverdi’s “Vespers of the Sacred Virgin.”

“Illuminating The Soul”
Oct. 19 & 21
Oregon Repertory Singers, First United Methodist Church, 1838 S.W. Jefferson St.

The choir sings music by Mozart and Mendelssohn; young Norwegian jazz pianist turned composer Ola Gjeilo; Spanish composer Carlos Surinach; and Finnish composer Einojuhaani Rautavaara; plus spirituals and gospels. Accompanist Naomi LaViolette will improvise at the keyboard in music by Gjeilo and Dave Brubeck.

David Byrne & St. Vincent
Oct. 18
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

A legend of artsy rock, the former Talking Head joins with one of today’s most thought-provoking pop artists (and former Polyphonic Spree member, known as Annie Clark offstage) for a collaboration featuring their new original music for brass bands, drums and keyboard.

Beethoven: Five Sonatas for Cello and Piano
Oct. 14
Chamber Music Northwest, Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 S.W. Park Ave.

The acclaimed duo of Peter Wiley and Anna Polonsky performs some of Beethoven’s finest, if under-appreciated, chamber music.

“Choral Glory”
Oct. 12-13 (First Baptist Church, 911 S.W. 11th Ave.); Oct. 14 (Kaul Auditorium at Reed College, 3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd.)
Cappella Romana/Portland Baroque Orchestra

Two of the Northwest’s — and the nation’s — finest historically informed ensembles join forces to sing and play some of the most popular masterpieces by the leading troika of Baroque composers: J.S. Bach, George Frideric Handel and Antonio Vivaldi.

“Byrds of a Feather”
Oct. 6
Portland Viol Consort, Grace Memorial Church, 1535 N.E. 17th Ave.

Some of the best period instrument players in the region join singer Tim Galloway to perform music by the great English Renaissance composer William Byrd and his contemporaries.

“Songs of Lament and Loss”
Oct. 7
The Ensemble, Grace Memorial Episcopal Church, 1535 N.E. 17th Ave.

The newish all-star vocal group sings Francis Poulenc’s 1944 anti-war setting of Paul Eluard poems, “A Snowy Night,” plus a Monteverdi masterpiece and that unsurpassed Romantic song cycle, Schubert’s epic “Winter’s Journey,” performed by singer Tim O’Brien and pianist Michael Barnes.

“Views from Cascadia”
Sept. 28
Third Angle, Agnes Flanagan Chapel, Lewis and Clark College, 0615 S.W. Palatine Hill Rd.

In one of the most valuable concerts of the year, the superb new music ensemble performs music written by composers from here and now — today’s Northwest composers, including the great Alaska-based John Luther Adams, whose atmospheric music beautifully evokes natural settings and phenomena.

“Parker Plays Mozart”
Sept. 22-24
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway

Portland favorite Jon Kimura Parker returns as soloist in the most powerful of all piano concertos, Mozart’s dark, dramatic Piano Concerto No. 20, K.466, plus one of the orchestra’s rare forays into the music of contemporary composers, Andrew Norman’s “Drip, Blip, Sparkle, Glint, Glide, Glow, Float, Flop, Chop, Pop, Shatter, Splash,” plus music by Rachmaninoff and more.

“Big Night”
Sept. 22
Portland Opera
Keller Auditorium, 222 S.W. Clay St.

The opera’s annual kickoff gala and street party returns with performances of classic arias, a Marx Brothers movie, and more.

Tags: classical, classical music, opera

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