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Weekend MusicWatch: Mash Notes ♥︎

By Brett Campbell
February 14, 2014
Music
Storm Large rejoins the Oregon Symphony this weekend. Photo: John Rudoff.

Storm Large rejoins the Oregon Symphony this weekend. Photo: John Rudoff.

Instead of participating in a sentimentalized, pressurized, commercialized Hallmark faux-holiday, how about celebrating  productive pairs and pairings making beautiful music together? And this being open minded Oregon, threesomes, foursomes, and veritable onstage orgies of polymusical intercourse abound.

Musica Maestrale, Saturday, Community Music Center, Portland. $14. Two of the Northwest’s top lutenists, Hideki Yamaya and Portland Baroque Orchestra’s John Lenti, join in dulcet duets for various lutes including guitar, theorbo, and tiorbino by rarely heard Italian Baroque composers including Castaldi, Kapsberger, Granata, and more.

ATOS Trio, Friday and Saturday, Ashland, $30. Friday’s concert by the Berlin threesome features trios by a trio of Czech composers (Dvorak, Smetana, Suk) and Saturday’s boasts a foursome of French kisses by Debussy, Chaminade, Boulanger, Faure, and Francaix.

Beth Donnelly & Douglas Feller, Friday, Walters Cultural Arts Center, Hillsboro. $15. The husband / wife, baritone / soprano duo sing love songs from operas and musicals.

Vagabond Opera & Wanderlust Circus, Saturday, Star Theater, Portland. $25. Opera singers, celli, sax, guitar, clarinet, accordion, bass, drums, tango, cabaret, Balkan, Klezmer, rock, jazz, 15 languages, fire dancers, belly dancers, aerialists, stilt walkers, acrobats — sounds like our kinda love-fest.

Lynn Harrell & Portland Cello Project, Saturday, Kaul Auditorium. Reed College, Portland. Free. One of the world’s greatest classical cellists plays Mozart, Mendelssohn, Beethoven and Webern, while some of his Portland-based cello travelers do their ever-charming classical meets contemporary meets popular thing. The website says this one’s long been sold out (or whatever you call it when free tickets are all spoken for), but you can try your luck on the waiting list.

Imani Winds, Sunday, Beall Concert Hall, University of Oregon, Eugene. Read my preview here. Imani is one of the most appealing and important things to happen to classical music in ages.

Stephanie & Saar, Sunday, Portland Piano Company, free. The duo pianists play music by American composers George Gershwin, Aaron Copland, Conlon Nancarrow, plus Schubert and more.

Amy Hansen & Hideki Yamaya, Sunday, Grace Episcopal Church, Astoria. $15. By candlelight, the soprano and busy lutenist play plangent Renaissance and Baroque songs of love, loss and longing by Dowland, Purcell and more.

Arnica Quartet, Sunday, Liberty Theater, Astoria. $27. The estimable Portland foursome plays music by Purcell, Schubert, and Britten.

David Ewart, Leslie Garman, Sandra Hyslop, Sunday, Tabor Heights United Methodist Church, Portland. Donation. Oregon Symphony concertmaster emeritus Hugh Ewart guest stars in this program of duets and quartets for piano, violin, and voice by Debussy, J.S. Bach, Mozart, Rodgers & Hammerstein, and more — including the Portland premiere of Jonathan Leshnoff’s “Yiddish Dance Suite,” written for Gil and Orli Shaham.

Duo: Violine, Tuesday, Hipbone Studio, Portland. $12. Pauline Kim Harris & Spencer Topel blend solo violin and live interactive electronics, including originals and music by contemporary composers including John Zorn and Takuma Itoh.

ORCHESTRA

Oregon Symphony & Storm Large, Friday and Saturday, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Portland. $45-$150. The rock-turned-pop-turned musically promiscuous singer cuddles up with several dozen of her favorite new partners in classic and contemporary love songs.

Oregon Mozart Players, Saturday, Beall Concert Hall, Eugene. The chamber orchestra performs  one of their namesake’s greatest symphonies (#39), loveliest concertos (the sublime Clarinet Concerto, featuring Eugene’s own master Michael Anderson), and Stravinsky’s update on one of Bach’s Brandenburgs, his sorta-jazzy 1937 Dumbarton Oaks concerto.

Portland Mandolin Summit, Saturday, The Old Church, Portland, $15. With up to a dozen of Portland’s finest pickers (from bands like Sneakin’ Out and Rio Con Brio) playing music from Brazil, Africa, Ireland, Greece, Appalachia, Eastern Europe, the Jewish diaspora, and more, it’s a multicultural gang pluck.

Portland Youth Philharmonic,  Sunday, Skyview High School, Vancouver, WA. $12. The young musicians play Tchaikovsky’s famous Violin Concerto and music by Mendelssohn and Humperdinck.

Starlight Symphony, Sunday, Tualatin Presbyterian Church. Baroquaholics who missed their fix because PBO went all Classical-era last weekend can get their Bach, Telemann and Handel (Water Music and Royal Fireworks music) here, in a concert  (rescheduled from last week’s snow-out) featuring the fine soprano Flora Sussely and flutist Ellen Berkcovitz.

Columbia Gorge Sinfonietta, Friday, The Dalles Civic Auditorium, and Sunday, Wy’east Performing Arts Center, Hood River. Donation. Musicians from the Gorge and Portland metro area play music by Telemann, Boehme and Sibelius’s Symphony #2.

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