But with the Oregon Symphony performing the mega-modernist Turangalîla symphony by 20th-century French mystic composer Olivier Messiaen — Priest’s teacher — this weekend, it made sense to move the mountain to Messiaen.
—Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
In fact, Choban transcribed the aptly titled “Storm Session” from Svoboda’s original for electric guitar and bass, and the other rhythmically charged acoustic pieces on this hour-long, no-intermission 75th-birthday tribute to the dean of Portland composers crackle with rock’n’roll electricity.
Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
[MODERNE CLASSICAL] These two free March Music Moderne-ending concerts amount to a double bill. […] As MMM proves every year, musical modernism can be fun.
—Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
[WEIRD PIANOS] Keyboards take center stage in this concert of music by Portland composers Jennifer Wright, including her dazzling “Looper” for eight hands; Art Resnick, best-known as a jazzer, but who also composes in classical styles; and Ted Clifford, featuring prepared and unprepared pianos, pianos tuned a quarter-note apart, toy pianos, electric piano and even a “skeleton piano.”
Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
With marriage equality finally on its way to long-overdue reality throughout the rest of the civilized world, Classical Revolution PDX celebrates music by gay composers, including works by Lou Harrison, Pauline Oliveros, Eve Beglarian and Peter Maxwell Davies—all of whom also just happen to be among the finest of the 20th century, regardless of orientation.
Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
One of the city’s finest and most musically adventurous professional choirs teams up with the Javanese percussion orchestra based at Lewis & Clark College….
Brett Campbell, Willamette Week (read the full article)
Thirty-nine years on, critics still don’t know what to make of Lou Reed’s free-noise opus Metal Machine Music. When Portland composer Bob Priest listened to it, he heard the score for a butoh-style dance piece—which really is as legitimate an interpretation as any.
—Willamette Week (read the full article)
Arrhythmic and discordant, [Metal Machine Music is] a perfect accompaniment for abstract movement, which is why Bob Priest instinctively paired it with butoh for his March Music Moderne festival this weekend.
—Aaron Spencer, Willamette Week (read the full article)
Jerusalem Quartet This landmark Friends of Chamber Music/ March Music Moderne extravaganza also boasts a borscht of free events, including talks on the composer, Soviet culture of his time and the quartet cycle; at Multnomah County Central Library on Saturday afternoon, there will be a roundtable discussion with the players, an open rehearsal and more.
—Willamette Week (read the full article)
Thollem is not for new ears, it’s challenging and anti-possible music — electronic, improv and analog effects are all terms that apply to, but do not explain, Thollem — because he lives in the mild part of an explosion, the safety in his playing in always melting, and always done solidly.
—Bim Ditson, Willamette Week (read the full article)
