Clips & Articles: Music
I review the Seattle and Portland operas, and smaller opera companies, for Portland-based Oregon ArtsWatch and Artslandia, and for Classical Voice North America, the official web site of the Music Critics Association of North America, of which I am a member. I write about classical, chamber and jazz music for Oregon ArtsWatch, Classical Voice North America, and previously, for Oregon Music News, concertonet.com and Northwest Reverb. For more stories and music reviews, check the archives at www.columbian.com between 1995-2006. My 2005 National Endowment for the Arts and Columbia Journalism grant helped immensely in music coverage.
‘Albert Herring’ review: keeping it fresh
Portland State University production overcomes the challenges posed by Benjamin Britten’s mid-20th century opera
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch April 2018
British composer Benjamin Britten’s Albert Herring is a challenging opera for both performers and audiences accustomed to the usual Romantic classics. Though funny, it proved a serious undertaking for the Portland State University Opera this week at Lincoln Performance Hall. Read More
Grownup stories; Mercury rising
Courtney Freed's tribute to Freddie Mercury and Rosalinde Block's "grownup" tales explore the possibilities of the solo show
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch April 2018
Something poignant resonated from the one-woman musicals Don’t Stop Me Now and Drama of the Gifted Grownup that appeared recently in Portland. Read More
New World to real world
An Oregon classical bassist steps toward the future in Miami with the legendary Michael Tilson Thomas and the New World Symphony
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch April 2018
Kyle Sanborn, a gifted musician, knows he’s on his way to playing many more Beethoven symphonies and Brahms concertos in his orchestra blacks. Born and reared in Portland, he is a first-year fellow – don’t call him a student – at the New World Symphony in Miami Beach, Fla., a laboratory in its 30th year of educating classical music’s next generation. Read More
Spontaneous Combustion reviews
Hub New Music
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2018
Hub New Music, an innovative Boston-based group shaking up chamber music, has members younger than 30 years old who make clarinet, violin, flute and cello play as one— if not always harmoniously. But harmony has never been the main component of 21st century music. Read More
PDX Jazz Festival reviews: music and more
Regina Carter, Bill Frisell & Thomas Morgan, Luciana Souza, Tigran Hamasyan and young Portland visual artists were among the highlights of the annual celebration of jazz
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2018.
From elite jazzers to startling up-and-comers, the 2018 Biamp PDX Jazz Festival spread the music around Portland Feb.15-25 with a 100-plus gigs, twice as many musicians, and a wide spread of venues and event prices, many free. Read More
PDX Jazz Festival preview: tributes
This year's jazz celebration offers homages to recently passed masters as well as today's sounds
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch February 2018
The past year saw a number of members of jazz royalty ascend to jazz Valhalla: Jon Hendricks, Al Jarreau, Geri Allen, Thara Memory and Hugh Masekela, among others. But jazz lives on. Read More
Sunwook Kim review: subtle touch, dynamic range
Versatile Portland Piano International recitalist knows when to exercise restraint — and when not to
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch January 2018
Sunwook Kim opened his January 14 Portland Piano International recital with J.S. Bach’s Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, written for organ (think majestic, reverential, full-voiced) and ran furiously through the opening toccata. Read More
“Cosi fan Tutte” review: identity crisis
Seattle Opera's production reveals that Mozart's comic opera is about more than sex
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch January 2018
In Seattle Opera’s production of Mozart’s Cosi fan Tutte, the stage’s main prop, aside from an inviting pile of mattresses, is a tall mirror. Each character pauses in front of it at some time, checking out his or her current reflection, or identity. The mirror is a throwback symbol in this thoroughly contemporary production, but it says more than a selfie, which catches only a moment and can be edited ad infinitum. Read More
PSU Opera’s ‘Cinderella’: sweet and silly in the salon
University’s production of Pauline Viardot’s operetta is a fairy tale within a play, set to music
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch December 2017
Cinderella is no stranger to the stage. Portland State University’s Cinderella is far from Gioachino Rossini’s 1817 Cenerentola or Jules Massenet’s 1899 version. Neither is it a by-the-book replica of the childhood fairy tale where a pretty downtrodden girl seeks her step-family’s love and that of a prince – and lucks out because the shoe fits! Read More
Christina & Michelle Naughton reviews: sister act
Portland Piano International brought identical twin virtuosos for two recitals, and they delivered performances as polished as their presentation
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch December 2017
I was privileged to hear 30 young virtuosos compete for the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano prize last summer in Fort Worth, Texas. Ranging from 19 to 30 years old, they played technically difficult, swooningly expressive pieces. Consider Sergei Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto No. 3 in D minor, Op. 30 and Antonin Dvořák’s Piano Quintet in A major, Op. 81, two of the most performed during the festival. Read More