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News & Notes: Chamber Music Northwest announces summer schedule

By Brett Campbell
February 9, 2013
Featured, Music, News & Notes
Imani Winds return to this summer's Chamber Music Northwest festival. Photo: Adriana Elias/divulgação.

Imani Winds return to this summer’s Chamber Music Northwest festival. Photo: Adriana Elias/divulgação.

Last night, with artistic director David Shifrin snow-stranded on the East Coast, Chamber Music Northwest interim executive director Elizabeth Harcombe announced the annual summer series’ 43rd season — at a reception held on her birthday.

New venues: after 28 years, CMNW will no longer stage performances at Catlin Gabel school, shifting its Tuesday concerts after this summer to Lincoln Hall at Portland State University in downtown Portland, where the classical action increasingly is. While Lincoln is closed for final renovations this summer, CMNW will hold concerts at nearby St. Mary’s Academy downtown.

Old friends: the superb Imani Winds ensemble returns to CMNW with a quintet arrangement of Stravinsky’s “The Rite of Spring,” on its centenary. Legendary film composer Lalo Schifrin’s “Letters to Argentina,” which received its West Coast premiere at CMNW in 2005, also returns, along with fine recent additions — Portland dance troupe BodyVox and the Protege Project, which brings rising young stars (this time, the Dover Quartet) to clubs as well as concert halls.

Composer Andy Akiho.

Composer Andy Akiho.

First timers: violinist Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, rising oboe star Liang Wang, and prize-winning young composer Andy Akiho make their CMNW debuts this summer, which also includes world premieres by prominent contemporary American composer Lowell Liebermann and the great Portland jazz pianist/composer (and PSU prof) Darrell Grant.

Other highlights include a concert of music from early 20th century Paris, a father-son show featuring pianist/ conductor Jeffrey Kahane (an Oregon Bach Festival staple) and composer/ singer Gabriel Kahane, a concert of works by five American composers born in 1938 (including John Harbison, Joan Tower, and Seattle-born William Bolcom), a father-son show featuring pianist/ conductor Jeffrey Kahane (an Oregon Bach Festival staple) and composer/singer Gabriel Kahane, appearances by pianist Alessio Bax, the Miro Quartet, cellist David Finckel and pianist Wu Han, and much more. ArtsWatch will provide continuing coverage of the festival again this summer.

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