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News and Notes: Cappella Romana kickstarts, Plazm turns 20, miracles at Miracle

By Barry Johnson
August 1, 2011
Culture, Featured
Cappella Romana will record its performance in the Church of 100 Doors in Greece.

This News and Notes moves from Greece to Kenton to the place where the seat cushion meets the human body. We call it our version of the staycation. Say the word “Greece,” and the Mediterranean sparkles.

Cappella Romana wants to record

We could devote Oregon Arts Watch entirely to worthy Kickstarter projects, there are so many good ones out there. But Cappella Romana’s campaign saves us a trip to Greece! The Portland choral group, which focuses on Byzantine music, though it wanders elsewhere on occasion, has two major performances in Greece the first week of September, and the second one, in the 6th-century Church of 100 Doors on the island of Paros, will be recorded. If you know Cappella Romana’s work with Byzantine chant, it’s hard to imagine that this won’t sound amazing.

Cappella Romana’s 20th anniversary season begins November 19 with “Mt. Sinai: Frontier of Byzantium” at St. Mary’s Cathedral in Portland.

PLAZM turns 20, too

Speaking of 20th anniversaries, it’s hard to believe that Plazm is also clicking over into its twenties. Wasn’t that just yesterday? Anyway, 20 deserves a party (well, almost anything does, I suppose) and Plazm, which is a combination magazine-design studio-shop-state-of-mind, has a party in mind, Saturday, August 20 at Disjecta, 8371 N. Interstate in Kenton.  The silent auction includes work by Storm Tharp, Michael Brophy, Melody Owen and Cynthia Lahti, among others, and the entertainment  for the party proper is appropriately eclectic, from the punk stylings of Smegma to the dance group Wooly Mammoth Comes to Dinner. The irregular Plazm magazine — and I mean that in the best sense — helped ease the pain of the loss of Joel Weinstein’s Mississippi Mud, back in the day, so, yes, maybe it HAS been around 20 years.

Sitting easy

Oregon Arts Watch champions audience comfort, and though it may not be news in other precincts, here we celebrate the little things that make our arts watching a little better. Which is a long way of saying that the Miracle Theatre has sent off its theater seats to be re-cushioned. They’ll replace the carpets, too, and work on lighting and sound in theater. Historical fact: The Miracle seats served playgoers once before — in the old Portland Civic Theatre, once the city’s leading theater company.

Oregon ArtsWatch Archives