In Charlie Dennard’s multi-continental musical world, fusion is anything but a dirty word. Then again, when the term is limited to the passé, 1970s-era quasi-mind-bending melding of rock, funk and electronic music, it does translate as a four-letter word to Dennard, though he doesn’t swear too much. The 45-year-old jazz musician/ composer/Cirque du Soleil musical director is as conscious of his polite French roots reaching back centuries into American history (his label is Deneaux Music) as he is of his Southern heritage. Dennard’s southern ingredients include a childhood in Birmingham, Ala., and an adult life, off and on in New Orleans. He studied with jazz pianist Ellis Marsalis (father of brothers Wynton, Branford, et al.) in the late ‘90s at the University of New Orleans, where he earned a master’s degree in music. Read More

Love and death are opera’s go-to themes, but erase those traditional expectations when Postcard from Morocco opens Friday for a four-performance premier run at Portland’s Newmark Theater. Expect a brew of Beckett-like suspense flavored with quirky characters with such names as Woman with a Hatbox and Man with a Shoe Sample Kit. Instead of a conventional orchestra, eight instruments – guitar, alto saxophone and trombone included – will accompany the seven singers. Read More

Scottish moors and forbidding towers have ways of inspiring violence and insanity. Even Lady MacBeth’s blood-stained dress pales against Lucia’s blood-soaked wedding gown in Portland Opera’s Lucia di Lammermoor, which opened Friday at Keller Auditorium for a two-weekend run. Read More

Everybody knows his “Madame Butterfly,” “La Boheme” and “Tosca,” but why is Giacomo Puccini’s “La Rondine” (“The Swallow”), which opens Friday at Portland State University’s Lincoln Performance Hall, so rarely seen or even heard of? Read More

Angela Meade was originally approached to sing the title role of Vincenzo Bellini’s tragic opera Norma for the 2010 Caramoor Festival in New York’s Westchester County. The Northwest native knew it would pose an immense challenge. The role “requires so much of a singer vocally, technically, emotionally,” Meade said. “Norma is consumed with so many different emotions. She’s betrayed by her best friend who is sleeping with the father of her children. She has so much anger that she wants to kill her children. She has a crazy amount of emotional demands.” Read More

Hats off, including those floppy Renaissance berets, to Portland Opera for setting its first 21st-Century opera. A West Coast premiere, Philip Glass’s chamber opera, Galileo, appropriately was staged at the 880-seat Newmark Theatre, an intimate venue compared to PO’s usual place, the sprawling 2,992-seat Keller Auditorium. Read More

After jazz musician Wynton Marsalis watched the love duet “Spring Yaounde” in rehearsal, he tore up the music he’d written for that section of “Griot New York.”

The duet was the most beautiful dance he’d seen, Marsalis told Garth Fagan, “Griot’s” creator. And the third dance in the full-length piece, “Yaounde” features a novel kiss that travels from chin to mouth to forehead while dancers pull off leg extensions demanding Herculean off-center balancing. Marsalis was blown away. Read More

The Portland Jazz Festival brings a single dance event to its lineup when it joins with White Bird at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 22, in the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall. Read More

Dee Dee Bridgewater, as huge a name in jazz vocals as Roy Haynes’ is in drumming, is doing more than headlining the 2012 Portland Jazz Festival.

She is honoring Lady Day, aka Billie Holiday, one of jazz’s pioneering singers and influences. Read More

Giacomo Puccini created stunning music and synched it precisely with unfolding drama. He drew characters with staying power — after he revised and revised. Even world-weary music critics love his work, and love it over again when the opera is well done. Madame Butterfly, winding up this week with final Portland Opera performances Thursday and Saturday at the Keller Auditorium, sold out both previous performances this week because the piece is among the best-known and beloved in the canon, but also because it has heartbreakingly lyrical music, a heartbreaking story — and because of Butterfly. She is a helluva character. She’s tough. She’s sweet. She’s complex. Read More