Angela Allen

Luminous, not tragic.

The choral composer and conductor, artist-in-residence at this year’s OBF, performed his radiant “The Sacred Veil,” a collaboration with Charles Anthony Silvestri in memory of Silvestri’s late wife.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch July 2024

EUGENE, Ore — I love Eric Whitacre’s music. I imagine that many fans of choral music agree with me. His work is lyrical and harmonious, poetic and optimistic. It’s approachable. Read More

Powerhouse organist Paul Jacobs

The reigning king of organ performed J.S. alongside Damien Geter, Lowell Liebermann, and Saint-Saëns.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch July 2024

EUGENE, ORE. —A surprise Bach fugue popped up in the middle of the Oregon Bach Festival’s serious symphonic organ program on July 11. Unscripted, amid a sophisticated night of two world premieres, Bach Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 sent the audience soaring into Bach-adoration. Read More

Mel Bochner at The Schnitzer Collection

'Mel Bochner: Words Mean Everything' is on view in the new gallery space at NW Yeon. Angela Allen sits down with Jordan Schnitzer to discuss the new show, the gallery space, and his vision for his art collection.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch June 2024

Mel Bochner, who is 84 and recovering on the East Coast from a prolonged battle with Covid and brain surgery, reflected on a print called Liar in the current Portland show, Mel Bochner: Words Mean Everything. Read More

Love affairs require some care: PSU Opera’s production of “The Merry Widow”

The refreshing English-language student production of Franz Lehár’s playful opera moved the action to 1960s Paris and added a few fresh feminist twists.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch May 2024

If you caught one of the four performances of The Merry Widow in late April at Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, you got a taste of a full-blown semi-professional opera company. These productions are engineered and performed by mostly undergraduate students? Well yes, but under some very good direction. Read More

Persistence reborn: Resonance Ensemble with composer Darrell Grant, writer A. Mimi Sei, and Oregon Remembrance Project’s Taylor Stewart

The March 17 concert featured commissioned work by Grant and Sei alongside music by Joel Thompson, Rosephayne Powell, and regular Resonance collaborator Melissa Dunphy.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2024

Birds and soaring songs flew by during Resonance Ensemble’s powerful concert March 17 at Alberta Rose Theatre. No surprise the company of well-balanced voices (there were 19 for this performance), founded by visionary choral director Katherine FitzGibbon, has stuck around for 15 years. Once again, Resonance let us in on poetic, socially conscious music, this time by Black contemporary composers, that inspires us to fly a bit higher. Read More

A conduit to the heart: Portland Opera’s production of “The Snowy Day”

The family-friendly opera by composer Joel Thompson and librettist Andrea Davis Pinkney was premiered in 2021 Houston and runs in Portland through March 24.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2024

Whimsical, warm, winsome.

The Snowy Day, Portland Opera’s one-act hour-long spring piece, playing through March 24 at the Newmark Theatre, is built on the beguiling 1962 children’s picture book by Ezra Jack Keats. The book–more than the opera, which was commissioned by the Houston Grand Opera and premiered there in 2021–was a game-changer. It was the first children’s book from a major publisher (Viking Press) to feature a Black child, and the first prestigious Caldecott Medal-winner (1963) to tell a Black kid’s story. That was some six decades ago, and many people, including former First Lady Michelle Obama and Native American best-selling author Sherman Alexie, consider it one of the first books they loved. Today, you can’t find it at the library. It is usually checked out. Read More

“X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” at Seattle Opera

SO co-produced the revival of the 1986 Anthony Davis opera, revised and re-premiered in 2022 by Detroit Opera.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2024

SEATTLE — It’s about time that Seattle Opera got in on staging a Black-composed opera with its current co-production of X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X.

Black operas have stormed the stages in the past several years with riveting productions, a sea change in programming. Count among them Blue, The Central Park Five, Fire Shut Up in My Bones, Omar and Champion, several of which we’ve seen in the Northwest. The operas have been compelling and deeply shocking, showing slices of life and pockets of terror that most of us, if we are white, never experience. Read More

Moments of companionship: Saxophonist Donny McCaslin and the Blackstar Symphony perform David Bowie’s final album with Oregon Symphony

McCaslin, also the touring show’s artistic director, discusses his time recording with the singer and working to bring “Blackstar” to the symphony.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch February 2024

It’s old news that David Bowie’s final album Blackstar came out in January 2016, two days before Bowie died of cancer at 69 years old. Of course, his swansong LP, which Rolling Stone called his “best ever,” never spun out live concerts. Bowie kept his declining health a secret until the end of his life, so who knew there would be no more Bowie appearances? And why is “Blackstar” the album’s name? Is it a word associated with mortality and immortality? Perhaps the best explanation came from Blackstar producer and longtime Bowie collaborator Tony Visconti, who called the album “a parting gift” – and a gift that keeps on giving with the run of Blackstar Symphony. Read More

Unspeakably sad yet somehow uplifting: San Francisco Opera’s ‘Omar’

The Pulitzer-winning opera by Rhiannon Giddens & Michael Abels makes its way across the country.

Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch November 2023

SAN FRANCISCO – More and more, stupendous operas such as Omar, the 2023 Pulitzer Prize-winner, are taking us on real-life journeys through America, many of those journeys unspeakably sad yet somehow uplifting. These searing operatic travels are based on true stories and histories worth bringing to life, to the stage, and to our understanding. Read More