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Weekend MusicWatch

By Brett Campbell
September 16, 2015
Music

Music accompanied by imagery — cartoons, video games, films, and more — highlights this weekend’s Oregon music, which also includes plenty of jazz and “world music,” even if not labeled as such.  If you know of other concerts our readers should hear about, please mention them in the comments section below.

Catfish
September 16
Turn Turn Turn, 8 NE Killingsworth, Portland.
Blue Cranes saxman Joe Cunningham, guitarist Dan Duval, and drummer Ken Ollis’s new album of “orchestrated improvisations,” Restraint, is one of the year’s Oregon jazz gems.

Max Hatt / Edda Glass 
September 16, The Old Church, 1422 SW 11th Ave. Portland.
September 17, The Jazz Station, Eugene.
Vocalist/lyricist Edda Glass and her songwriter and guitarist partner Max Hatt specialize in music that originated quite a distance from their Montana home — Brazilian bossa nova, to be exact, with its signature cool, laid-back vocals.

Pokémon: Symphonic Evolutions
September 17
Oregon Symphony, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland.
The OSO has drawn a much broader, younger — and larger — audience to its series of concerts featuring video game music. These are touring packages that include a conductor, projected visuals, and orchestrated music from popular video games, a business that’s now as big as the music and movie industries combined. Pokémon alone has sold 260 million videos in two decades. Like the games themselves, the music has also evolved far beyond the simplistic scores of the early days, and some of the music now occupies the same place in orchestral music as film music did at a comparable stage in its development.

CRPDX karp

Composer and pianist Beth Karp plays original scores to vintage films Thursday in Portland.

TRUTH OR AAAAA!, Beth Karp
September 17
Valentine’s, 232 SW Ankeny, Portland.
Both these Portland performers specialize in creating music for film — one cartoons, the other vintage cinema.

Phoenix Park-Kim
September 18
Portland Piano Company, 711 SW 14th Ave. Portland.
In this free concert, the rising young Indiana-based pianist plays music by Haydn, Gershwin, Brubeck, Liszt and contemporary composer Daniel Felsenfeld.

DakhaBrakha performs at Portland's Time Based Art Festival. Photo: Tetyana Vasylenko

DakhaBrakha performs at Portland’s Time Based Art Festival. Photo: Tetyana Vasylenko

DakhaBrakha
September 19
Lincoln Performance Hall, 1620 SW Park. Portland.
Read my Willamette Week preview of this TBA Festival event.

Dianne Davies
September 19
Michelle’s Pianos, 600 SE Stark St. Portland.
Portland pianist Dianne Davies has earned accolades and laughs for the kind of classical comedy perpetrated by musical humorists like Victor Borge, PDQ Bach and Igudesman & Joo. But she’s also known as a sterling interpreter of contemporary classical music, particularly by local composers. To depict her journey of personal healing through music, Davies and other local artists use some of that music (by both veteran and young Portland composers including Art Resnick, Jeff Winslow, Tristan Bliss, Nicholas Yandell and more), along with visual art, pantomime, dance, masks and poetry.

Oregon Symphony
September 19
Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland.
With help from an onstage rock band, rock singer Randy Jackson, and an appropriately psychedelic light show, the orchestra plays music of the pioneering art rockers Pink Floyd.

“David Schiff: 70th Birthday Celebration”
fEARnoMUSIC, September 20, Kaul Auditorium, 3203 SE Woodstock Blvd. Portland.
Read my Willamette Week preview and my ArtsWatch interview with Oregon’s most nationally renowned composer.

Delgani String Quartet
September 20
First United Methodist Church, 1376 Olive Street, Eugene.
Read Gary Ferrington’s ArtsWatch feature on the new quartet.

Delgani String Quartet includes Kelly Quesada (cello), Morgan O’Shaughnessey (violin), Wyatt True (violin) , and Jannie Wei (violin).

Delgani String Quartet includes Kelly Quesada (cello), Morgan O’Shaughnessey (violin), Wyatt True (violin) , and Jannie Wei (violin).

Alfredo Muro 
September 20
Milagro Theatre, 425 SE 6th Avenue, Portland.
In this recital in Milagro Theatre’s valuable annual La Luna Nueva Festival, the accomplished Peruvian-born classical guitarist plays original compositions and 20th century music by Astor Piazzolla, Henry Mancini, Moreno-Torroba, Celedonio Romero, Antonio Carlos Jobim, and more.

“Guitar in the Age of Beethoven”
September 20
Jefferson Baroque Orchestra, Umpqua Community College, 717 Siskyou Boulevard, Ashland.
Using period instruments, guitarists James Bishop-Edwards, David Rogers, and Michael Philbert play duos and trios by Carulli, Sor, Lhoyer, and other Parisian composer-guitarists contemporary with Beethoven.

“Mary Poppins”
September 20-October 4
The Shedd, Eugene.
Read my Eugene Weekly preview.

Tiempo Libre
September 21
Director Park, 815 SW Park Ave., Portland.
In this free concert celebrating the upcoming premiere of Artist Repertory Theater’s new musical, Cuba Libre, the Grammy-nominated septet that inspired the show plays Afro Cuban music.

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Want to learn more about contemporary Oregon classical music? Check out Oregon ComposersWatch. 

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