Today's Birthdays

Benedetto Marcello (1686-1739)
Robert Planquette (1848-1903)
Ada Clement (1878-1952)
Norman Del Mar (1919-1994)
Steuart Bedford (1939)
Reinhard Goebel (1952)
Randall Davidson (1953)

and

Mary Harris Jones, or "Mother Jones" (1837-1930)
Primo Levi (1919-1987)
Kim Addonizio (1954)
J. K. Rowling (1965)

Today's Birthdays

Gerald Moore (1899-1987)
Meredith Davies (1922-2005)
Moshe Atzmon (1931)
Buddy Guy (1936)
Paul Anka (1941)
Teresa Cahill (1944)
Alexina Louie (1949)
Christopher Warren-Green (1955)

and

Emily Brontë (1818-1848)
Thorstein Veblen (1857-1929)
Henry Moore (1898-1986)
William Gass (1924-2017)

Today's Birthdays

Sigmund Romberg (1887-1951)
Frank Loesser (1910-1969)
Charles Farncombe (1919-2006)
Avet Terterian (1929-1994)
Mikis Theodorakis (1925)
Peter Schreier (1935)
Bernd Weikl (1942)
Olga Borodina (1963)

and

Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859)
Don Marquis (1878-1937)
Stanley Kunitz (1905-2006)
Paul Taylor (1930-2018)
T.J. Stiles (1964)

Today's Birthdays

Rued Langgaard (1893-1952)
Rudy Vallée (1901-1986)
Kenneth Alwyn (1925-2020)
Riccardo Muti (1941)

and

Ludwig A Feuerbach (1804-1872)
Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
Beatrix Potter (1866-1843)
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Malcolm Lowry (1909-1957)
John Ashbery (1927-2017)

Today's Birthdays

Mauro Giuliani (1781-1829)
Enrique Granados (1867-1916)
Ernő Dohnanyi (1877-1960)
Harl McDonald (1899-1955)
Igor Markevitch (1912-1983)
Mario del Monaco (1915-1982)
Leonard Rose (1918-1984)
Carol Vaness (1952)

and

Joseph Mitchell (1908-1996)
Elizabeth Hardwick (1916-2007)
Bharati Mukherjee (1940)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1966, Alfred Hitchcock's thriller "Torn Curtain" opens in New York — without the film score that Bernard Herrmann had composed for it. The famous director fired Herrmann during the score's first recording sessions when Hitchcock discovered Herrmann had composed a "symphonic" score and not the "pop" score that Hitchcock had specifically requested.

Today's Birthdays

John Field (1782-1837)
Franz Xaver Mozart (1791-1844)
Francesco Cilea (1866-1950)
Serge Koussevitsky (1874-1951)
Ernest Schelling (1876-1939)
Georges Favre (1905-1993)
Tadeusz Baird (1928-1981)
Alexis Weissenberg (1929-2012)
Anthony Gilbert (1934)
Roger Smalley (1943-2015)
Mick Jagger (1943)
Kevin Volans (1949)
Angela Hewitt (1958)

and

George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950)
Carl Jung (1875-1961)
Pearl S. Buck (1892-1973)
Aldous Huxley (1894-1963)
Jean Shepherd (1921-1999)
Stanley Kubrick (1928-1999)

Chamber Music Northwest presents two world-premieres plus Mozart and Messiaen

The graceful and effortless motion of birds taking flight and swirling upward into the heavens was artfully conveyed in Kenji Bunch’s “Vesper Flight” by flutist Tara Helen O’Connor and pianist Monica Ohuchi in its world premiere performance on Saturday, July 10th, at Kaul Auditorium as part of the Chamber Music Northwest summer festival. Inspired by the common swift, a species of bird noted for its evening ascent to very high altitudes where it flies for long periods of time, “Vesper Flight” exuded a series of climbing runs that evoked a flock on its way into the skies. As a kind of underlayment against the rising, fluttering tones, Ohuchi would lay down a bass line that may have been quoting Purcell’s “Evening Hymn.” (In his introductory remarks, Bunch said that he would quote from that Purcell piece), nicely tying a bow around the idea of a vesper prayer, which typically takes place at sundown. A rhapsodic passage ended with a loud, high sound from the flute followed by a whispery whistle that faded wonderfully into the distance, like swifts disappearing beyond the clouds.

“Vesper Flight” was preceded by a mesmerizing performance of “Louange à l’immortalité de Jésus” (“Praise for the Immortality of Jesus”) from Olivier Messiaen’s “Quartet for the End of Time.” Violinist Bella Hristova and pianist Gloria Chien (who is CMNW’s co-artistic director) created a soulful yet refined sound that transcended time and space. Absolutely ethereal!

David Ludwig’s “Les Adieux,” written in honor of David Shifrin, who helmed CMNW for 40 years and is now its Artistic Director Emeritus, featured clarinetist Shifrin as the soloist surrounded by a chamber orchestra of 17 musicians under the baton of Earl Lee. Divided into three movements: The Farewell, The Absence, and The Return, “Les Adieux” started with Shifrin modulating above and beyond his colleagues, who created a sound that was muffled and clouded in descending lines. This overall concept persevered into the next movement as well with Shifrin flawlessly executing a number of sustained runs and notes that he seemed to hold forever while the orchestra finally got to play an optimistic rising series of notes. In the last movement the pace quickens for a while but again settled into another slow dance that ended with Shifrin exhibiting incredible breath control with several long notes. Overall, it seemed that the piece didn’t really go anywhere, but it did showcase Shifrin’s amazing virtuosic talent.

An all-star ensemble gave a superb performance of Mozart’s “Viola Quintet in C Major” (K. 515) to close out the concert. Violinists Soovin Kim (who is also CMNW’s co-artistic director) and Rebecca Anderson, violists Paul Neubauer and Paul Laraia, and cellist Fred Sherry polished this gem of a piece with verge and terrific artistry. Highlights included the lovely conversational quality between Kim and Sherry in the first movement, the refined ebb and flow of the second with Sherry masterfully finishing phrases, Neubauer’s poignant viola solo and elegant duet with Kim in the third, and the robust and joyful playing by the entire ensemble – with pinpoint pauses – in the final movement. Kudos to the musicians for outstanding balance and dynamics throughout. Bravi!

Still, for this reviewer, it was the Messiaen piece that stuck with me the most and makes me want to hear it again and again and again.

Today's Birthdays

Alfredo Casella (1883-1947)
Maureen Forrester (1930-2010)

and

Eric Hoffer (1898-1983)
Elias Canetti (1905-1994)

and from The Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1788 that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart entered into his catalog the completion of one of his most beloved works, Symphony Number 40 in G Minor (sometimes called “The Great G Minor Symphony”). It was written in the final years of Mozart’s life, when things were not going well. An infant daughter had died a few weeks earlier, he had moved into a cheaper apartment, and he was begging friends and acquaintances for loans. But in the summer of 1788, he wrote his last three symphonies: Symphony Number 39 in E-Flat, Symphony in G Minor, and the Jupiter symphony. It is not known for sure whether Mozart ever heard any of these symphonies performed.

Today's Birthdays

Adolphe Charles Adam (1803-1856)
Ernest Bloch (1880-1959)
Robert Farnon (1917-2005)
Ruggiero Ricci (1918-2012)
Guiseppe de Stefano (1921-2008)
Wilfred Josephs (1927-1997)
Peter Serkin (1947)
Philippe Hurel (1955)

and

Jonathan Newton (1725-1807)
Alexandre Dumas (1802-1870)
Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914?)
Frank Wedekind (1864-1918)
Robert Graves (1895-1985)
John D. McDonald (1916-1986)

Today's Birthdays

Franz Berwald (1796-1868)
Johann Vesque von Püttlingen (1803-1883)
Edouard Colonne (1838-1910)
Francesco Cilea (1866-1950)
Ben Weber (1916-1979)
Leon Fleisher (1928-2020)
Bernard Roberts (1933-2013)
Maria João Pires (1944)
Susan Graham (1960)

and

Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Vikram Chandra (1961)

and from the former Writer's Almana:

It was on this day in 1829 that William Burt received a patent for the "typographer." It was a typewriter that looked more like a record player. It had a swinging arm that picked up ink and then printed a letter, and then the paper was manually adjusted to make space for the next letter.

Today's Birthdays

Luigi Arditti (1822-1903)
Hans Rosbaud (1895-1962)
Licia Albanese (1913-2014)
George Dreyfus (1928)
Ann Howard Jones (1936)
Nigel Hess (1953)
Eve Beglarian (1958)

and

Emma Lazarus (1849-1887)
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
Raymond Chandler (1888-1959)
Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
Tom Robbins (1936)
S. E. Hinton (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Jean Rivier (1896-1987)
Isaac Stern (1920-2001)
Anton Kuerti (1938)
Cat Stevens (1948)
Margaret Ahrens (1950)

and

Hart Crane (1899-1932)
Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961)
Tess Gallagher (1943)
Garry Trudeau (1948)

Today's Birthdays

Gaston Carraud (1864-1920)
Déodat de Séverac (1872-1921)
Gunnar de Frumerie (1908-1987)
Vilém Tauský (1910-2004)
Michael Gielen (1927-2019)
Nam June Paik (1932-2006)
Hukwe Zawose (1938-2003)
Carlos Santana (1947)
Bob Priest (1951)

and

Francesco Petrarca (1304-1374)
Pavel Kohout (1928)
Cormac McCarthy (1933)

Today's Birthdays

Boyd Neel (1905-1981)
Louis Kentner (1905-1987)
Klaus Egge (1906-1979)
Peggy Stuart-Coolidge (1913-1981)
Robert Mann (1920-2018)
Gerd Albrecht (1935-2014)
Nicholas Danby (1935-1937)
Dominic Muldowney (1952)
David Robertson (1958)
Carlo Rizzi (1960)
Mark Wigglesworth (1964)
Evelyn Glennie (1965)
Russell Braun (1965)

and

Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930)

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Bononcini (1670-1747)
Pauline Viardot (1821-1910)
Julius Fučík (1872-1916)
Kurt Masur (1927-2015)
Screamin' Jay Hawkins (1929-2000)
R. Murray Schafer (1933)
Ricky Skaggs (1954)
Tobias Picker (1954)
Jonathan Dove (1959)

and

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)
Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979)
Harry Levin (1912-1994)
Yevgeny Yevtushenko (1933)
Hunter S. Thompson (1937-2005)
Elizabeth Gilbert (1969)

Today's Birthdays

Isaac Watts (1674-1748)
Sir Donald F. Tovey (1875-1940)
Eleanor Steber (1914-1990)
Vince Guaraldi (1928-1976)
Peter Schickele (1935)
Michael Roll (1946)
Dawn Upshaw (1960)

and

Shmuel Yosef Agnon (1888-1970)
Ernest Percival Rhys (1859–1946)
Erle Stanley Gardner (1899-1970)

Today's Birthdays

Antoine François Marmontel (1816-1898)
Eugène Ysaÿe (1858-1931)
Fritz Mahler (1901-1973)
Goffredo Petrassi (1904-2003)
Bella Davidovich (1928)
Bryden Thomson (1928-1991)
Geoffrey Burgon (1941)
Pinchas Zukerman (1948)
Richard Margison (1954)
Joanna MacGregor (1959)
James MacMillan (1959)
Helmut Oehring (1961)

and

Joshua Reynolds (1723-1792)
Roald Amundsen (1872-1928)
Ginger Rogers (1911-1995)
Tony Kushner (1956)

Today's Birthdays

Ronald Binge (1910-1979)
Jack Beeson (1921-2010)
Julian Bream (1933-2020)
Sir Harrison Birtwistle (1934)
Geoffrey Burgon (1941-2010)
Linda Ronstadt (1946)
John Casken (1949)
Gérard Lesne (1956)

and

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
Thomas Bulfinch (1796-1867)
Walter Benjamin (1892-1940)
Iris Murdoch (1919-1999)
Jacques Derrida (1930-2004)
Arianna Huffington (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Gerald Finzi (1901-1956)
Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)
Piero Bellugi (1924-2012)
Eric Stokes (1930-1999)
Unsuk Chin (1961)

and

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
Owen Wister (1860-1938)
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
Frank Raymond Leavis (1895-1978)
Isaac Bashevis Singer (1902-1991)
Irving Stone (1903-1989)
Natalia Ginzburg (1916-1991)
Arthur Laurents (1917-2011)

Today's Birthdays

Sir Reginald Goodall (1905-1990)
Carlo Bergonzi (1924-2014)
Jeanne Loriod (1928-2001)
Per Nørgård (1932)
Albert Ayler (1936-1970)
Jennifer Smith (1945)

and

John Clare (1793-1864)
Isaak Babel (1894-1941)

Today's Birthdays

Anton Arensky (1861-1906)
George Butterworth (1885-1916)
Kirsten Flagstad (1895-1962)
Oscar Hammerstein II (1895-1960)
Van Cliburn (1934-2013)
Richard Stolzman (1942)
Roger Vignoles (1943)

and

Julius Caesar (100 BC - 44 BC)
Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)
George Eastman (1854-1932)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920)
Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Today's Birthdays

Antônio Carlos Gomes (1836-1896)
Liza Lehmann (1862-1918)
Nicolai Gedda (1925-2017)
Herbert Blomstedt (1927)
Hermann Prey (1929-1998)
Francis Bayer (1938-2004)
Liona Boyd (1949)
Suzanne Vega (1960)
Aisslinn Nosky (1978)

and

James McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
E. B. White (1899-1985)
Harold Bloom (1930-2019)
Jhumpa Lahiri (1967)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1798, in the nation's capital of Philadelphia, President John Adams signed an Act of Congress establishing the United States Marine Band. (The original "32 drummers and fifers" assisted in recruiting and entertained residents.)

Today's Birthdays

Henri Weiniawski (1835-1880)
Carl Orff (1895-1982)
Ljuba Welitsch (193-1996)
Ian Wallace (1919-2009)
Josephine Veasey (1930)
Jerry Herman (1931-2019)
Arlo Guthrie (1947)
Graham Johnson (1950)
Béla Fleck (1958)

and

John Calvin (1509-1564)
Nikola Tesla (1856-1943)
Marcel Proust (1871-1922)
Saul Bellow (1915-2005)
Alice Munro (1931)

Today's Birthdays

Ottorino Respighi (1879-1936)
Dame Elizabeth Lutyens (1906-1983)
David Diamond (1915-2005)
David Zinman (1936)
Paul Chihara (1938)
John Mark Ainsley (1963)

and

Ann Radcliffe (1764-1823)
Dorothy Thompson (1893-1961)
Oliver Sacks (1933-2015)
David Hockney (1937)
Dean Koontz (1945)

Today's Birthdays

Percy Grainger (1882-1961)
George Antheil (1900-1959)
Billy Eckstine (1914-1993)
Susan Chilcott (1963-2003)
Raffi Cavoukian (1948)
Zhou Long (1953)

and

Philip Johnson (1906-2005)
J. F. Powers (1917-1999)
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (1926-2004)
Janet Malcolm (1934)
Anna Quindlen (1953)

Today's Birthdays

Gustav Mahler (1860-1911)
Gian Carlo Menotti (1911-2007)
Cor de Groot (1914-1993)
Doc Severinsen (1927)
Joe Zawinul (1932-2007)
Ringo Starr (1940)
Michaela Petri (1958)

and

Lion Feuchtwanger (1884-1958)
Marc Chagall (1887-1985)
Robert Heinlein (1907-1988)
David McCullough (1933)

And from The Writer's Almanac:

Today is the birthday of Gustav Mahler (1860), born in Kalischt, Bohemia, in what is now the Czech Republic. His father was an Austrian Jewish tavern-keeper, and Mahler experienced racial tensions from his birth: he was a minority both as a Jew and as a German-speaking Austrian among Czechs, and later, when he moved to Germany, he was a minority as a Bohemian. His father was a self-made man, very fiery, and he abused Mahler’s mother, who was rather delicate and from a higher social class. Mahler was a tense and nervous child, traits he retained into adulthood. He had heart trouble, which he had inherited from his mother, but he also had a fair measure of his father’s vitality and determination, and was active and athletic.

Mahler began his musical career at the age of four, first playing by ear the military marches and folk music he heard around his hometown, and soon composing pieces of his own on piano and accordion. He made his public piano debut at 10, and was accepted to the Vienna Conservatory at 15. When he left school, he became a conductor, and then artistic director of the Vienna Court Opera. He became famous throughout Europe as a conductor, but he was fanatical in his work habits, and expected his artists to be, as well. This didn’t win him any friends, and there were always factions calling for his dismissal. He spent his summers in the Austrian Alps, composing.

1907 was a difficult year for Mahler: he was forced to resign from the Vienna Opera; his three-year-old daughter, Maria, died; and he was diagnosed with fatal heart disease. Superstitious, he believed that he had had a premonition of these events when composing his Tragic Symphony, No. 6 (1906), which ends with three climactic hammer blows representing “the three blows of fate which fall on a hero, the last one felling him as a tree is felled.” When he composed his ninth symphony, he refused to call it “Symphony No. 9” because he believed that, like Beethoven and Bruckner before him, his ninth symphony would be his last. He called it A Symphony for Tenor, Baritone, and Orchestra instead, and he appeared to have fooled fate, because he went on to compose another symphony. This one he called Symphony No. 9 (1910); he joked that he was safe, since it was really his 10th symphony, but No. 9 proved to be his last symphony after all, and he died in 1911. Most of his work was misunderstood during his lifetime, and his music was largely ignored — and sometimes banned — for more than 30 years after his death. A new generation of listeners discovered him after World War II, and today he is one of the most recorded and performed composers in classical music.

With the pandemic at bay, Portland Opera emerges with fiery Frida before a live audience - outdoors

Ballet Foklorica performs

A convivial evening outdoors Thursday night (June 24) witnessed the resurrection of live Portland Opera's production of Robert Xavier Rodríguez's “Frida.” The Portland metro area was on the verge of the big heat wave, and it was hot, but not hot enough to reduce patrons to a puddle of sweat. With an audience arranged in pods, the atmosphere was lively, expectant, and informal with coolers and an occasional glass of wine. Everyone had been starved and eagerly anticipating its first live performances since February of 2020.

This production, crisply directed by Andreas Mitisek (who had previously directed the company’s production of “As One”) took place at the Jordan Schnitzer CARE Summerstage between the company’s headquarters at the Hampton Opera Center and OMSI. The stage featured huge speakers, excellent lighting, and video screens to project the action to those furthest away.

The sound of an Amtrak train and an occasional MAX line didn’t disturb the performers in the slightest. The evening kicked off with a half-hour of dancing by Ballet Folklorica with colorful costumes, fancy footwork, and, colorful, swirling skirts. Their dances (to pre-taped music) gave a taste of traditional Mexican culture, which stood in contrast to untraditional life of the opera’s title character, Frida Kahlo.

Written in 1991 (and revised in 1993), “Frida” has enjoyed a number of productions both in the US and abroad. By weaving spoken text with singing and a pastiche of musical styles that never settles into place, “Frida” straddles the line between opera and musical, making it a hybrid that I would call an oprical. You can hear influences from Gershwin, Weill, Sondheim as well as Mariachi, and Mexican folk music plus dissonance and some atonality sprinkled in. Its complexity was expertly conveyed by a tight ensemble consisting of six singers and six musicians led by Uruguayan American conductor Andrés Cladera.

Through a series of vignettes, “Frida” depicts the turbulent life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, whose paintings have acquired an international following in recent years. When she was 18, she became immersed in painting as a way to overcome a near fatal accident that involved a streetcar. Her independent spirit, determination, and resilience, embodied with a powerful performance by Catalina Cuervo, are a big part of her story. Cuervo’s impressive vocal power, in particular, extended into the basement of the mezzo-range, which she delivered with a sultry gusto.

Because of her serious injuries, Frida was constantly confronted with death, conveyed by three Calaveras (characters wearing masks that portray skulls) who swirl around her from time to time. Frida’s tempestuous marriage to the famous muralist Diego Rivera, sung with passion by Bernardo Bermudez, was a real roller-coaster with numerous infidelities on both sides, including lesbian lovers of Frida. So despite their unified political views with the Mexican Communist Party, Frida and Diego’s rocky relationship ended in divorce (1939), but their remarriage a year later came across as superficial.

Aline Bahamondez created a passionate Cristina Kahlo (Frida’s sister), who was riddled with anguish after her affair with Rivera. Bahamondez, along with Rachel Hauge, Joseph Michael Muir, and Adrian Rosales-Casillas expertly portrayed numerous roles that in included the Fords, the Rockefellers, and the Trotskys – all of whom added drama to Frida’s life.

Samples of Kahlo’s and Rivera’s paintings, projected on the large scrim that formed the huge back wall of the stage, reinforced the storyline. Frida aptly summed up her style of art versus Rivera’s when she said, “Rivera paints the big outside. I paint the inside.”

PS: Today is Frida Kahlo's birthday.

Today's Birthdays

Alberto Nepomuceno (1864-1920)
Hans Eisler (1898-1962)
Dame Elizabeth Lutyens (1906-1983)
Dorothy Kirsten (1910-1992)
Ernst Haefliger (1919-2007)
Bill Haley (1925-1981)
Maurice Hasson (1934)
Vladimir Ashkenazy (1937)
Stephen Hartke (1952)

and

Frida Kahlo (1907-1954)
Eleanor Clark (1913-1996)
Hilary Mantel (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Josef Holbrooke (1878-1958)
Wanda Landowska (1879-1958)
Jan Kubelík (1880-1940)
Gordon Jacob (1895-1984)
Paul Ben-Haim (1897-1984)
George Rochberg (1918-2005)
János Starker (1924-2013)
Kenneth Gaburo (1926-1993)
Matthias Bamert (1942)
Alexander Lazarev (1945)
Paul Daniel (1958)
Isabelle Poulenard (1961)

and

A. E. Douglass (1867-1962)
Jean Cocteau (1889-1963)
Barbara Frischmuth (1941)
Craig Nova (1945)

Today's Birthdays

Louis-Claude Daquin (1694-1772)
Stephen Foster (1826-1864)
Roy Henderson (1899-2000)
Flor Peeters (1903-1986)
Mitch Miller (1911-2010)
Tibor Varga (1921-2003)
Cathy Berberian (1925-1983)

and

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864)
Lionel Trilling (1905-1975)
Neil Simon (1927-2018)
Tracy Letts (1965)

Today's Birthdays

Theodore Presser (1848-1925)
Leoš Janáček (1854-1928)
George M. Cohan (1878-1942)
Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901-1953)
Meyer Kupferman (1926-2003)
Carlos Kleiber (1930-2004)
Brigitte Fassbaender (1939)

and

Franz Kafka (1883-1924)
M.F.K. Fisher (1908-1992)
Sir Tom Stoppard (1937)
Dave Berry (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Christoph W. Gluck (1714-1787)
Earl Hawley Robinson (1910-1991)
Frederick Fennell (1914-2004)

and

Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556)
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock (1724-1803)
Hermann Hesse (1877-1962)
Tyrone Guthrie (1900-1971)
Wislawa Szymborska (1923-2012)

Today's Birthdays

Thomas Andrew Dorsey (1899-1993)
Hans Werner Henze (1926-2012)
Andrae Crouch (1942-2015)
Philip Brunelle (1943)
Mario Venzago (1948)
Sioned Williams (1953)
Nikolai Demidenko (1955)

and

George Sand (1804-1876)
Jean Stafford (1915-1979)
William Strunk Jr. (1969-1946)
Twyla Tharp (1941)

and from the Composers Datebook:

On this day in 1897, the Music Division of the Library of Congress is founded in Washington, D.C.)