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.
Portland Jazz Festival preview: Trane’s Tracks
This year’s jazz extravaganza celebrates the 90th birthday of the great saxophonist, composer, improviser and bandleader John Coltrane
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch February 2016
“Coltrane has the power to move people,” says up-and-coming Portland-grown saxophonist Nicole Glover. “He can reach that special place in you that only you have access to. Some people may call it soul. … But you don’t have to be a spiritual person to feel it move you.” Read More
Portland State Opera review: Tasty amuse-bouches
PSU double bill menu features a pair of frothy, lightweight comedies
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch December 2015
Double-billed with Georges Bizet’s silly Dr. Miracle, Bon Appetit is the more delicious of the one-acts cooked up this month by Portland State University Opera. It’s an indisputable hoot about Julia Child making a real-life “gateau chocolat.” The show plays through Dec. 13 at PSU’s Lincoln Hall’s 84-seat Studio Theater, a small space to contain such a lot of laughs – but it works. Read More
Chamber Music Northwest review: Artistic alliances
Youthful exuberance shaped the mood, while collaboration stitched a common thread throughout festival’s first weekend of performances
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch July 2015
Chamber Music Northwest hitched up with Portland’s Northwest Dance Project and Korean-born pianist Yekwon Sunwoo in Friday’s performance of Chopin’s music and original dance. Saturday showcased top Argentine tango musicians with Reed College and CMNW Artistic Director David Shifrin on clarinet. And Sunday, the Oregon Bach Festival’s youthful Berwick Academy, led by the dynamic and equally youthful Matthew Halls, played Beethoven with Portland Baroque Orchestra’s Artistic Director Monica Huggett. Now that’s some crossing over. Read More
Northern Exposure: Washington chamber operas entice Oregonians
Music of Remembrance’s After Life: Stein and Picasso duel over art and morality
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch May 2015
How do art and moral responsibility intersect? Or do they?
That’s the endlessly intriguing debate enacted in the new chamber opera After Life, whose world premier was staged on a Monday in early May in a small-ish recital hall at Seattle’s Benaroya Hall. Two weeks later, After Life played to a sell-out crowd in San Francisco’s Temple El-Manuel. Read More
Show Boating
Portland Opera’s Show Boat: American classic steams on
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch April 2015
Liam Bonner is easy to find online. He has 1,999 Twitter followers, and he tweets about more than his busy opera schedule. He writes hash-tagged one-liners about beer, Pennsylvania sports teams, Pittsburgh (his hometown), dogs, art, and bad customer service.
“It took awhile to find my voice, but I’ve been dangerous ever since,” the 34-year-old opera singer said over coffee in downtown Portland. Read More
Portland Opera preview: A Vulnerable Carmen
New production offers a title character with a breakable heart.
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch February 2015
Think you’ve seen enough Carmens? Rest assured one more will be worth dressing up for. This time, Carmen will be far more complex than a seductress. Read More
Some reflections on the 2015 Portland Jazz Festival
Festival curators did a first-class job of mixing up big names and smaller ones, international hotshots with local stars.
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch March 2015
Take superstar Kurt Elling, who crooned an hour-plus of ‘60s-era Sinatra hits in the first week of the annual Portland Jazz Festival, which ran from Feb. 18-March 1. Read More
Portland Jazz Festival preview: Stellar names and rising stars
12th annual festival offers 12 days and nights of first class local and international improvisers.
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch February 2015
Always drawing jazz royalty and trailblazing musicians, the Portland Jazz Festival has conscientiously booked international names — but not always world-famous ones, at least not yet. Read More
Portland Opera preview: Strauss’s batty, bubbly Die Fledermaus
The company celebrates its first half-century with a Champagne party opera
Originally Published in Oregon ArtsWatch November 2014
A party piece? A masterpiece? A piece of 19th-century confection that resists staleness? Read More
It’s a reprisal, but even better than Seattle Opera’s 2007 Don Giovanni
Warhorse or not, this Don Giovanni takes us for a sublime ride. A second one.
Originally Published in Concertonet.com October 2014
The production reprises Seattle Opera’s 2007 hit, so original in staging, set design, costumes, and pacing that it left audiences with a masterpiece impossible to pigeonhole by period. Read More