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MusicWatch Weekly: community spirit

By Brett Campbell
September 27, 2017
Featured, Music

This week’s Oregon music highlights feature several concerts devoted to bringing communities together and celebrating various heritages that help make up the larger community that we all belong to. Please add your suggested music events in the comments section below.

Leyla McCalla performs at Portland’s Old Church Concert Hall Saturday.

“In a Landscape”
Portland pianist Hunter Noack has embarked on a second September series of outdoor performances around Oregon. (Read my ArtsWatch story about the first one.) This time, he’s put a nine-foot Steinway on a trailer, and is toting it to eastern Oregon. He’s also bringing wireless headphones to distribute to listeners so they can experience the music without alfresco acoustical limitations, and various guest artists, from singer and former Miss America Katie Harman Ebner, Pink Martini founder/pianist Thomas Lauderdale and members of various Oregon orchestras. Check the website for who’s playing what and where and other details on individual performances through September 30.
Wednesday, Oregon Trail Interpretive Center, 22267 OR Highway 86, Baker City; Thursday, Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, 47106 Wildhorse Blvd. Pendleton.

Eugene Symphony
The orchestra performs a recent work by contemporary Chicago composer Augusta Read Thomas, and Joyce Yang solos in Beethoven’s Piano Concerto No. 1 before the orchestra unless that pinnacle of Russian Romanticism, Tchaikovsky’s Symphony No. 4.
Thursday, Hult Center, Eugene.

Music for Everyone Day
A wide variety of musicians, including the Woolen Men, Skull Diver, Ashi, JoJoScott and more, supply the tunes in this free, family-friendly four hour celebration.
Friday, Portland City Hall.

The Gondoliers
Light Opera of Portland’s latest Gilbert & Sullivan show.
Friday-Sunday, Alpenrose Dairy Opera House, 6149 SW Shattuck Road, Portland.

The Dover Quartet performs in Ashland. Photo:Tom Emerson.

Dover Quartet
The Chamber Music Northwest favorites return to Oregon to play quartets by contemporary American composer Richard Danielpour, Tchaikovsky, and Bartók.
Friday, Southern Oregon University Recital Hall, Ashland.

The Broken Consort
One of the most potentially exciting additions to Oregon’s music scene, this early music ensemble recently relocated from Boston and New York to Portland. Their repertoire ranges far beyond the too-limited scope of the state’s other historically informed performers, including new music (they just recorded an album of originals by leader and singer Emily Lau), and this concert focuses on American baroque music. Yes, there was such a thing. People were making music in the Americas during the 17th and 18th centuries. The eight musicians, who hail from Portland, Los Angeles, New York, and beyond, sing and play music written in the New England colonies (by composers like the great William Billings and Francis Hopkinson), in Spanish colonial America, shape note hymns, and even 19th century songs by Stephen Foster. But they’ll also perform music for ngoni, the instrument brought by African slaves, Native American chants and more, including the west coast premiere of Douglas Buchanan’s 2016 Green Field of Amerikay. It’s the fall’s most fascinating concert.
Saturday, Nordia House, and Sunday, The Hallowed Halls, Portland.

Jim Pepper Native Arts Festival
The fifth annual celebration of a true Oregon original and legendary Native American jazz saxophonist includes Tracy Lee Nelson, Winona LaDuke, Gary Ogan, and more. And if you’re interested in Pepper’s life and work, check out Organic Listening Club’s latest edition at Artists Repertory Theater on October 17.
Saturday, Parkrose High School, Portland.

Taiko Together
If you live outside Japan and enjoy the stirring sounds of Japanese percussion music, or just like whacking on big drums,  Portland is the place to be. This concert brings together all four of the city’s taiko ensembles — Portland Taiko, Takohachi, En Taiko, and Unit Souzou — in a celebration of some of the world’s most, ah, striking sounds. It’s a fine opportunity to sample the different varieties available too, from youth-oriented classes to traditional tunes to folk dance to new music and more.
Saturday, P.C.C. Sylvania, Performing Arts Center.

Portland Taiko at its fall 2016 concert. Photo: Brian Sweeney.

The Vanport Mosaic and Maxville Heritage
Portland Jazz Composers Ensemble’s fascinating new project kicks off with a free performance featuring music performed by singer Marilyn Keller and pianist Ezra Weiss, featuring Weiss’s song with lyrics by Renee Mitchell, inspired by the story of Maxville. This afternoon discussion event includes presentations about Maxville and Vanport, followed by a talk with the artistic creators, who are hoping to receive input from the community itself for this important multimedia community history project.
Saturday, Oregon Historical Society, 1200 SW Park Ave, Portland.

Leyla McCalla
Former Carolina Chocolate Drop cellist/singer/guitarist/banjoist Leyla McCalla’s music draws on her Haitian heritage as well as the Creole, Cajun, jazz and French influences that still simmer in and around her New Orleans home. McCalla’s covers of traditional song and sometimes poignant, sometimes danceable, expertly crafted original music reflect the vitality of the many rich folk traditions she’s assimilated.
Saturday, Old Church Concert Hall, Portland.

OneBeat
Organized by NYC’s Bang on a Can new music collective and sponsored by the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, the four-year-old OneBeat program brings young (age 19-35) musicians from around the world to collaboratively create original music, play it on tour, lead workshops with local young audiences, and “develop strategies for arts-based social engagement” when they return to their home countries. This year’s fellows include South African vocalist Nonku Phiri; Aisaana Omorova, a komuz (traditional three-stringed strummed instrument) player from Kyrgyzstan; Chicago-based producer Elijah Jamal; and Belorussian producer and singer Natalia Kuznetskaya. The program has come to Sisters, Portland and elsewhere around the nation in years past; see it now before our current rulers find out about this effort to increase intercultural understanding.
Saturday, The Belfry, Sisters.

Heal the World: A Humanitarian Benefit Concert
Instigated by two of Oregon’s best known musicians, YouTube vocalists Evynne Hollens and Peter Hollens, this benefit concert features well known folk singers Mike and Carleen McCornack, musical theatre star Dylan Stasack, local singer-songwriters Keenan Hansen and Alessandra Ziolkowski, the UO’s acclaimed Divisi women’s choir (where Evynne got her start), Oregon Children’s Choir, various local high school choirs, and the church’s own Restore band. They’ll play Broadway tunes from this year’s Tony Winner, Dear Evan Hansen and Rent, multi generational pop from Mumford & Sons to Simon & Garfunkel, civil rights anthems, and more. Bring donations to Food for Lane County and to disaster-relief organizations. includes songs from a vast variety of musical genres — folk songs, today’s pop, musical theater, and beyond.
Saturday, First United Methodist Church, Eugene.

Violinist Anne Akiko Meyers joins Salvator Brotons and the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra again this weekend.

Vancouver Symphony Orchestra
One of the world’s most popular classical violinists, Anne Akiko Meyers, gets to go wild in Ravel’s showpiece Tzigane, and also stars in Rondo Capriccioso by Saint-Saëns. The band also plays a pair of Dvořák’s Slavonic Dances and Rachmaninoff’s rollicking Symphonic Dances.
Saturday and Sunday, Skyview Concert Hall, Vancouver WA.

Shanghai Quartet
Although the band has made splendid recordings of music by traditional and contemporary Chinese composers and 20th century composers like American Alan Hovhaness, this is an old school program of quartets by Dvorak, Mendelssohn and Frank Bridge.
Sunday, Beall Hall, University of Oregon.

Victor Wooten Trio
The world’s reigning electric bassist (plus composer, producer, author, educator, Flecktones co-founder, acrobat, magician, and more) brings his high-energy, high-spirited jazz, instrumental funk and rock along with virtuosic drummer Dennis Chambers (a veteran of Bootsy Collins and Santana’s bands) and saxophonist Bob Franceschini. If you liked Weather Report, you’ll find the forecast favorable.
Monday, Revolution Hall, Portland.

Schubert Ensemble
For its farewell tour, the London piano and strings quintet plays music by Shostakovich, Dvorak, Martinu, Schumann, Suk and their namesake.
Monday and Tuesday, Lincoln Hall, Portland State University, and Wednesday, October 4, Liberty Theatre, Astoria.

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