Third Angle New Music Ensemble

Literature and music combine in  Third Angle New Music Ensemble’s world premiere performance of composer Stephen Taylor’s Paradises Lost, a chamber opera based on the wonderful 2001 novella by Portland’s own empress of letters, Ursula K. LeGuin, who’s worked with the band before. More Oregon literary influences appear in the twin personages of Portland poets Michael and Matthew Dickman, who’ll read their work onstage at Reed College’s Kaul Auditorium, accompanied by new music from Portland composer/guitarist Nalin Silva, an old friend of the Dickman twins who’ll perform his original score with Third Angle music director Ron Blessinger.

You can hear more contemporary words and music in ViVoce’s concerts at northeast Portland’s St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal church, with poet and storyteller Bob Sterry joining the women’s choir for folk songs and music by Finland’s greatest living composer, Einojuhani Rautavaara.

And speaking of choral music, the Portland Symphonic Choir sings Joseph Haydn’s The Creation with the Oregon Symphony this weekend at Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. You can find out more about it here.

There’s more Oregon new music onstage at Northwest Portland’s Sherman Clay Pianos when Cascadia Composers convene for two concerts of homegrown music, featuring a premiere by the dean of Oregon composers, Tomas Svoboda and another by veteran Portland composer Gary Noland, plus a dozen or so other Oregon musical creations.

Later this year, the Oregon Symphony will feature Brazilian pianist Arnaldo Cohen as soloist in Tchaikovsky’s first Piano Concerto, but you can catch him on his own this Sunday at Willamette University’s Hudson Hall performing music by Haydn, Brahms, and Chopin.

Another great pianist, Jon Nakamatsu, joins San Francisco’s Cypress String Quartet at the University of Oregon’s Beall Concert Hall Sunday in still more Haydn — can’t have too much of him — Beethoven and Brahms.