Oregon Bach Festival and Quasthoff

A month or so ago, I heard that Thomas Quasthoff will be coming to the Oregon Bach Festival in 2012.

Today's Birthdays

Jean Martinon (1910-1976)
Sidney Griller (1911-1993)
Dean Dixon (1915-1976)
Max Roach (1924-2007)
Sherrill Milnes (1935)
Rod Stewart (1945)
James Morris (1947)
Mischa Maisky (1948)
Rockwell Blake (1951)
Charles Norman Mason (1955)

and


Robinson Jeffers (1887-1962)
Philip Levine (1928)
Stephen E. Ambrose (1936-2002)

Morten Lauridsen coming to PSU

I recently heard that composer Morten Lauridsen is coming to Portland State soon to do some choral workshops. More details will be forthcoming.

File this under 'I could've told you that...'

A new study suggests that dopamine, the chemical in our brains that's responsible for the pleasure we feel from food, alcohol and sex is also responsible for the pleasure we get from listening to music of any and all kinds. So sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll are more intimately connected than we ever realized...

Today's Birthdays

Rudolf Bing (1902-1997)
Herva Nelli (1909-1994)
Henriette Puig‑Roget (1910-1992)
Pierre Pierlot (1921-2007)
Joan Baez (1941)
Scott Walker (1944)
Jimmy Page (1944)
Waltraud Meier (1956)
Hillevi Martinpelto (1958)
Nicholas Daniel (1962)
Svitlana Azarova (1976)

and

Karel Čapek (1890-1938)
Kurt Tucholsky (1890-1935)
Brian Friel (1929)

Today's Birthdays

Jean Gilles (1668-1705)
Hans von Bülow (1830-1894)
Jaromir Weinberger (1896-1967)
Giacinto Scelsi (1905-1988)
Giorgio Tozzi (1923)
Robert Starer (1924-2001)
Benjamin Lees (1924-2010)
Elvis Presley (1935-1977)
Zdeněk Mácal (1936)
Evgeny Nesterenko (1938)
Elijah Moshinsky (1946)
Paul Dresher (1951)
Vladimir Feltsman (1952)

and

Bronislava Nijinska (1891-1972)
Stephen Hawking (1942)

Today's Birthdays

Clara Haskil (1895-1960)
Francis Poulenc (1899-1963)
John Brownlee (1900-1969)
Nicanor Zabaleta (1907-1993)
Günter Wand (1912-2002)
Ulysses Kay (1917-1995)
John Lanigan (1921-1996)
Jean-Pierre Rampal (1922-2000)
Tommy Johnson (1935-2006)
Iona Brown (1941-2004)
Richard Armstrong (1943)

and

Hugh Kenner (1923-2003)
Nicholson Baker (1957)

Today's Birthdays

Max Bruch (1838-1920)
Georges Martin Witkowski (1867-1943)
Alexander Scriabin (1872-1915)
Karl Straube (1873-1950)
Earl Kim (1920-1998)
Alexander Baillie (1956)

and

Carl Sandburg (1878-1967)
Khalil Gibran (1883-1931)
E.L. Doctorow (1931)

Today's Birthdays

Constanza Mozart (1762-1842)
Frederick Converse (1871-1940)
Nikolai Medtner (1880-1951)
Reginald Smith-Brindle (1917-2003)
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli (1920-1995)
Laszlo Heltay (1930)
Alfred Brendel (1931)
Maurizio Pollini (1942)

and

Friedrich Dürrenmatt (1921-1990)
W. D. Snodgrass (1926-2009)
Umberto Eco (1932)
Charlie Rose (1942)


From the New Music Box:

On January 5, 1939, the voder (later called the vocoder), a machine that synthesizes the human voice, was demonstrated publicly for the first time at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia by Homer Dudley. On that same day, the Philadelphia La Scala Opera mounted a production of Horus, an opera in 4 acts by Hungarian-American composer Gabriel Von Wayditch (1888-1969), who composed a total of 14 operas including one that is 8 1/2 hours-long and is cited as the longest opera ever composed in the Guiness Book of World Records. The performance of Horus, conducted by Gustav Mahler's nephew Fritz, turned out to be the only one ever of one of Wayditch's operas performed in his lifetime. Umberto Eco (1932)

Today's Birthdays

Giovanni Pergolesi (1710-1736)
Josef Suk (1874-1935)
Frank Wess (1922)
Grace Bumbry (1937)
Joseph Turrin (1947)
Margaret Marshall (1949)
Ronald Corp (1951)
Peter Seiffert (1954)
Boris Berezovsky (1969)

and

Sir Issac Newton (1642-1727)
Jacob Grimm (1785-1863)
Louis Braille (1809-1852)
Augustus John (1878-1961)
Doris Kearns Goodwin (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Victor Borge (1909-2000)
Ronald Smith (1922-2004)
Sir George Martin (1926)
HK Gruber (1943)
David Atherton (1944)

and

William S. Burroughs (1914-1997)

Today's Birthdays

Mily Balakirev (1837-1910)
Michael Tippett (1905-1998)
Barbara Pentland (1912-2000)
Alberto Zedda (1928)
Peter Eötvös (1944)
Janet Hilton (1945)
Vladimir Ovchinnikov (1958)
Tzimon Barto (1963)
Robert Fertitta (1970)
Eric Whitacre (1970)

and

Isaac Asimov (1920-1992)
Christopher Durang (1949)

Happy New Year!

We hope that you have a healthy and enjoyable 2011. We will continue to post some observations about the music scene in Northwest Reverb, although you will find much more of our writings in the classical section of Oregon Music News.

Today's Birthdays

Charles Racquet (1598 - 1664)
Frederick William Gaisberg (1873-1951)
Artur Rodzinski (1892-1958)
Erich Schmid (1907-2001)
Trude Rittmann (1908-2005)
Richard Verreau (1926-2005)
Maurice Béjart (1927 - 2007)
Bernard Greenhouse (1916)
Alberto Portugheis (1941)

and

E. M. Forster (1879-1970)
J. D. Salinger (1919-2010)
Maurice Béjart (1927-2007)

Portland, Oregon - New Music Mecca

Composer Bob Priest pointed out to me that Portland now has seven groups devoted to new music:

- Third Angle New Music Ensemble
- Fear No Music
- Cascadia Composers
- Northwest New Music
- Marzena
- Free Marz String Trio
- Seventh Species
- Friends of Rain

I that's a pretty impressive list.

Today's Birthdays

Caroline Miolan‑Carvalho (1827-1895)
Ernest John Moeran (1894-1950)
Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940)
Nathan Milstein (1904-1992)
Jaap Schröder (1925)
Odetta (1930-2008)
Stephen Cleobury (1948)
Donna Summer (1948)
Jennifer Higdon (1962)

and

Henri Matisse (1869-1954)

Today's Birthdays

William Croft (1678-1727)
André Messager (1853-1929)
Alfred Einstein (1880-1952)
Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987)
Paul Bowles (1910-1999)
Sir David Willcocks (1919)
Bo Diddley (1928-2008)
Bruno Canino (1935)
June Anderson (1950)
Stephen Jaffe (1954)
Antonio Pappano (1959)

and

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Sara Lidman (1923-2004)

Today's Birthdays

Pablo Casals (1876-1973)
Lionel Tertis (1876-1975)
Yves Nat (1890-1956)
Peggy Glanville-Hicks (1912-1990)
Billy Tipton (1914-1989)

and

William Gaddis (1922-1998)

Today's Birthdays

Christian Cannabich (1731-1798)
Francesco Tamagno (1850-1905)
Roger Sessions (1896-1985)
Earl "Fatha" Hines (1905-1983)
Johnny Otis (1921)
Nigel Kennedy (1956)

Today's Birthdays

Sir John Goss (1800-1880)
Tito Schipa (1888-1965)
Marlene Dietrich (1904-1992)
Oscar Levant (1906 - 1972)

and

Charles Olson (1910-1970)
Wilfrid Sheed (1930)
Chris Abani (1966)

Today's Birthdays

Leopold Mannes (1899-1964)
Maurice Gendron (1920-1990)
Thea King (1925-2007)
Earle Brown (1926-2002)
Phil Specter (1940)
Wayland Rogers (1941)
Harry Christophers (1953)
Andre-Michel Schub (1953)

and

Thomas Gray (1716-1771)
Henry Miller (1891-1980)
Jean Toomer (1894-1867)
Juan Felipe Herrera (1948)
David Sedaris (1958)

Merry Christmas!

Today's Birthdays

Orlando Gibbons (1583-1625)
Jean‑Joseph de Mondonville (1711-1772)
Chevalier de Saint‑George (1745-1799)
Cosima Wagner (1837-1930)
Lina Cavalieri (1874-1944)
Giuseppe de Luca (1876-1950)
Gladys Swarthout (1900-1969)
Cab Calloway (1907-1994)
Noël Lee (1924)
"Little" Richard Wayne Penniman (1935)
Noel Redding (1945-2003)
Jon Kimura Parker (1959)
Ian Bostridge (1964)

Today's Birthdays

Peter Cornelius (1824-1874)
Nikolai Roslavets (1881-1944)
Lucrezia Bori (1887-1960)
Charles Wakefield Cadman (1881-1946)
Sir Vivian Dunn (1908-1995)
Teresa Stich-Randall (1927-2007)
Mauricio Kagel (1931-2008)
Arnold Östman (1939)
Libby Larsen (1950)
Hans-Jürgen von Bose (1953)

and

Matthew Arnold (1822-1888)
Dana Gioia (1950)

Today's Birthdays

Joseph Boismortier (1689-1755)
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924) alternate date
Ross Lee Finney (1906-1997
Claudio Scimone (1934)
Ross Edwards (1943)
Edita Gruberová (1946)
Elise Kermani (1960)
Han-Na Chang (1982)

and

Norman Maclean (1902–1990)
Robert Bly (1926)

Interview with Mattie Kaiser at Oregon Music News

Bachxing Day returns! This year marks the fourth anniversary of Classical Revolution PDX's winter tradition of Bachxing Day, a musical celebration of the man and his music (on December 26th, Boxing Day.) No, there's no literal connection, but if you want to find out more about it, read our conversation here at OMN.

As a sidenote, I will be playing at Bachxing Day this year; on the mandolin a bouree from one of the cello suites and the top voice of one of the two-part inventions (however I will try to get someone else to play the other voice on another instrument) along with a prelude from another one of the cello suites but on the piano...yep, Bachxing Day is that kind of show.

Today's Birthdays

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787)
Giovanni Bottesini (1821-1889)
Giacomo Puccini (1858-1924)
Franz Schmidt (1874-1939)
Edgard Varèse(1883-1965)
Joseph Deems Taylor (1885-1966)
Alan Bush (1900-1995)
Andre Kostelanetz (1901-1980)
David Leisner (1953)
Jean Rigby (1954)
Zhou Tian (1981)

and

Jean Racine (1639-1699)
Kenneth Rexroth (1905-1982)
Donald Harrington (1935-2009)

Today's Birthdays

Zdeněk Fibich (1850-1900)
André Turp (1925-1991)
Frank Zappa (1940-1993)
Roger Lasher Nortman (1941)
Michael Tilson Thomas (1944)
András Schiff (1953)
Kim Cascone (1955)
Thomas Randle (1958)
Jonathan Cole (1970)

and

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

Does not repeat

I hate it in the Oregonian, when they run the words "Does not repeat" at the top of James McQuillen's reviews. I don't see why these words need to be printed. When a reporter writes a review of a basketball game or some other sporting event, it is not prefaced with the words "Does not repeat." I would rather see these few words removed and the space be given to McQuillen's review. If these words need to be printed, then they should appear in regular type at the end of McQuillen's review.

Today's Birthdays

Vagn Holmboe (1909-1996)
Gordon Getty (1933)
John Harbison (1938)
Roger Woodward (1942)
Mitsuko Uchida (1948)

and

Elizabeth Benedict (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Louis‑Nicolas Clérambault (1676-1749)
Fritz Reiner (1885-1963)
Edith Piaf (1915-1963)
Dalton Baldwin (1931)
Phil Ochs (1940-1976)
William Christie (1944)
Marianne Faithfull (1946)
Olaf Bär (1957)
Steven Esserlis (1958)
Rebecca Saunders (1967)

and

Italo Svevo (1861-1928)

Today's Birthdays

Charles Wesley (1707-1788)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Edward MacDowell (1860-1908)
Rita Streich (1920-1987)
William Boughton (1948)
David Liptak (1949)
Christopher Theofanidis (1967)

and

Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Christopher Fry (1907-2005)
Abe Burrows (1910-1985)

From the Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1892 that the Nutcracker ballet premiered at the Maryinsky Theater in St. Petersburg, Russia.

It was a collaboration among three men: Ivan Alexandrovich Vsevolojsky, the director of Russia's Imperial Theater; choreographer Marius Petipa; and composer Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky. Petipa and Tchaikovsky had recently teamed up to produce a ballet adaptation of The Sleeping Beauty, and it had been so successful that Vsevolojsky wanted them to collaborate again.

When The Nutcracker finally opened to the public, on this night in 1892, the initial reviews were not very favorable. One critic wrote: "For dancers there is rather little in it, for art absolutely nothing, and for the artistic fate of our ballet, one more step downward."

But Tchaikovsky's score has become a beloved part of the holiday season, with songs like "Waltz of the Flowers," "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy," and "Russian Dance." And The Nutcracker has gone on to become the most often-performed ballet of all time — hundreds of professional and amateur ballet companies in communities around the world are putting it on right now. The famous English ballet critic Richard Buckle opened his 1972 review of the ballet: "Well, we are one more Nutcracker nearer death."

Today's Birthdays

Domenico Cimarosa (1749-1801)
Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)
Arthur Fiedler (1894-1979)
Ray Noble (1903-1975)
William Wordsworth (1908-1988)
Art Neville (1937)

and

Ford Madox Ford (1873-1939)
William Safire (1929-2009)
John Kennedy Toole (1937-1969)

Today's Birthdays

François Adrien Boieldieu (1775-1834)
Zoltán Kodály (1882-1967)
Turk Murphy (1915-1987)
Steve Allen (1921-2000)
Dame Thea King (1925-2007)
Alice Parker (1925)
Kenneth Gilbert (1931)
Philip Langridge (1939)
Trevor Pinnock (1946)
Isabelle van Keulen (1966)

and

Jane Austin (1775-1817)
George Santayana (1863-1952)
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Noël Coward (1899-1973)

Today's Birthdays

Michel‑Richard Delalande (1657 - 1726)
Lotte Schöne (1891-1981)
Stan Kenton (1911-1979)
Ida Haendel (1924)
Eddie Palmieri (1936)
Nigel Robson (1948)
Jan Latham-Koenig (1953)

and

Ludwig Lazarus Zamenhof (1859-1917)
Maxwell Anderson (1888-1959)
Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000)
Edna O'Brien (1930)

Today's Birthdays

Maria Agata Szymanowska (1789-1831)
Georges Thill (1897-1984)
Spike Jones (1911-1965)
Rosalyn Tureck (1914-2003)
Dame Ruth Railton (1915-2001)
Ron Nelson (1929)
Christopher Parkening (1947)
Thomas Albert (1948)
John Rawnsley (1949)

and

Shirley Jackson (1919-1965)

Today's Birthdays

Alexis de Castillon (1838-1873)
Josef Lhévinne (1874-1944)
Eleanor Robson Belmont (1879-1979)
Samuel Dushkin (1891-1976)
Victor Babin (1908-1972)
Alvin Curran (1938)

and

Kenneth Patchen (1911-1972)
James Wright (1927-1980)
Lester Bangs (1948-1982)

Singing for Portland Neighborhood House

This afternoon, I'll be singing in a choir concert to raise money for Portland Neighborhood House. The concert features the choir of First Immanuel Lutheran Church and St. Luke Lutheran. The program includes John Rutter's "Gloria" accompanied by professional brass and percussion players. Dan Hibbet and Ralph Nelson share the conducting duties. There's no admission charge, but all donations will go to the Neighborhood House, which has programs to feed the hungry, house the homeless, and educate young and old. The concert takes place at 4 pm at St. Luke (6835 SW 46th Avenue, Portland). I'll be singing a solo in one of the numbers that the choirs sing. The concert also has a sing along section; so bring your voice!

Today's Birthdays

Andrey Schulz‑Evler (1852-1905)
Frank Sinatra (1915-1998)
Philip Ledger (1937)
Donald Maxwell (1948)
Margaret Tan (1953)
Jaap van Zweden (1960)
David Horne (1970)
Evren Genis (1978)

and

Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880)
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
John Osborne (1929-1994)

Today's Birthdays

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Elliott Carter (1908)
David Ashley White (1944)
Neil Mackie (1946)

and

Grace Paley (1922-2007
Naguib Mahfouz (1911-2006)
Thomas McGuane (1939)

Today's Birthdays

César Franck (1822-1890)
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Morton Gould (1913-1996)
Sesto Bruscantini (1919-2003)
Nicholas Kynaston (1941)
Julianne Baird (1952)
Kathryn Stott (1958)
Sarah Chang (1980)

and

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886)
Adolf Loos (1870-1933)

Toledo city council stiff arms Toledo Symphony's trip to Carnegie

It looks like Portland is not the only city that has thumbed its nose at its own orchestra. According to this report, the Toledo city council voted down a request to give the Toledo Symphony $10,000 to help defray the cost of travelling to Carnegie Hall to play in the Spring for Music festival next May. Earlier this year, the Oregon Symphony sought $20,000 from for its trip to the same festival but was turned away by the Portland City Counci.

I don't know about Toledo, but in Oregon, I've never seen Mayor Sam Adams or any of the city commissioners at an Oregon Symphony concert. Maybe they will show up when the orchestra plays at Carnegie Hall in May.

Today's Birthdays

Joaquin Turina (1882-1949)
Conchita Supervia (1895-1936)
Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006)
Dennis Eberhard (1943-2005)
Christopher Robson (1953)
Donny Osmond (1957)
Joshua Bell (1967)

and

John Milton (1608-1674)
Léonie Adams (1899 - 1988)
Ödön von Horváth (1901-1938)

From the Writer's Almanac:

Milton coined more than 600 words, including the adjectives dreary, flowery, jubilant, satanic, saintly, terrific, ethereal, sublime, impassive, unprincipled, dismissive, and feverish; as well as the nouns fragrance, adventurer, anarchy, and many more.

Oregon Symphony's Messiah close to SRO

The Oregon Symphony's facebook page mentioned that the orchestra's performances of Handel's Messiah on the 18th and 19th are close to selling out. Maybe this is due to the all-star Canadian soloists who will be featured in the production... or perhaps the conductor, Jean-Marie Zeitouni, who is also a Canadian.

Today's Birthdays

Claude Balbastre (1724-1799)
Jean Sibelius (1865-1957)
Manuel Ponce (1882-1948)
Bohuslav Martinů (1890-1959)
Gérard Souzay (1918-2004)
James Galway (1939)

and

Horace (65-8 B.C.)
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
James Thurber (1894-1961)
James Tate (1948)
Mary Gordon (1949)
Bill Bryson (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Bernardo Pasquini (1637 - 1710)
Pietro Mascagni (1863-1945)
Ernst Toch (1887-1964)
Rudolf Friml (1879-1972)
Daniel Jones (1912-1993)
Helen Watts (1927)
Harry Chapin (1942)
Daniel Chorzempa (1944)
Tom Waits (1949)
Kathleen Kuhlmann (1950)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)

and

Willa Cather (1873-1947)
Joyce Cary (1888-1957)
Noam Chomsky (1928)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Christoph Bach (1642-1703)
Ira Gershwin (1896-1983)
Dave Brubeck (1920)
Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1929)
Henryk Górecki (1933-2010)
Tomas Svoboda (1939)
John Nelson (1941)
Daniel Adni (1951)
Bright Sheng (1955)
Matthew Taylor (1964)

and

Baldassare Castiglione (1478-1529)
The Encyclopedia Brittanica (1768)

Today's Birthdays

Francesco Geminiani (1687-1762)
Little Richard (1932)
José Carreras (1946)
Krystian Zimerman (1956)
Osvaldo Golijov (1960)

and

Christina (Georgina) Rossetti (1830-1894)
Joan Didion (1934)
Calvin Trillin (1935)
Lydia Millet (1968)

Today's Birthdays

André Campra (1660-1744)
Sir Hamilton Harty (1879-1949)
Alex North (1910-1991)
Yvonne Minton (1938)
Lillian Watson (1947)
Andrew Penny (1952)

and

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1891)
Samuel Butler (1835-1902)
Rainer Maria Rilke (1875-1926)

Today's Birthdays

Nicolo Amati (1596-1684)
André Campra (1660-1744)
Antonio Soler (1729-1783)
Émile Waldteufel (1837-1915)
Anton Webern (1883-1945)
Halsey Stevens (1908-1989)
Nino Rota (1911-1979)
Irving Fine (1914-1962)
Charles Craig (1919-1997)
Paul Turok (1929)
José Serebrier (1938)
Matt Haimovitz (1970)

and

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)
Zlata Filipović (1980)

Today's Birthdays

Harry T. Burleigh (1866-1949)
Harriet Cohen (1895-1967)
Sir John Barbirolli (1899-1970)
Robert Moevs (1920-2007)
Maria Callas (1923-1977)
Irina Arkhipova (1925)
Jörg Demus (1928)

and

Georges-Pierre Seurat (1859-1891)
T. Coraghessan Boyle (1948)
George Saunders (1958)

Vote to help raise 25k for music ed in Portland schools

Charles Noble's bog is promoting an excellent idea that I'm reprinting here:

Peggy Swafford, former OSO violist and indefatigable champion of music education, has set up a project through the Music Education Assistance Project (a program of Local 99, American Federation of Musicians) to provide $25,000 to get much needed instruments for instrumental music instructors in the Portland Public Schools. The programs are chosen by popular vote on Pepsi’s Refresh Everything website, which allows for people to set up projects online and use social media to rally people to their cause. This is one case where the need is dire – please click over to Peggy’s project page and get her closer to her worth goal of providing Portland children with a musical education. You can vote more than once, so keep clicking and spread the word!

Today's Birthdays

François‑Xavier Richter (1709-1789)
Agathe Grøndahl (1847-1907)
Gordon Crosse (1932)
Lou Rawls (1933-2006)
Bette Midler (1945)
Rudolf Buchbinder (1946)
Leontina Vaduva (1960)

and

Alicia Markova (1910-2004)

Today's Birthdays

Carl Loewe (1796-1869)
Charles Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)
Ray Henderson (1896-1970)
Klaus Huber (1924)
Gunther Herbig (1931)
Walter Weller (1939)
Radu Lupu (1945)
Semyon Bychkov (1952)

and

Jonathan Swift (1667-1745)
Mark Twain (1835-1910)
L(ucy) M(aud) Montgomery (1874-1942)
Jacques Barzun (1907)
David Mamet (1947)

Today's Birthdays

Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848)
Billy Strayhorn (1915-1967)
John Brecknock (1937)
Chuck Mangione (1940)
Louise Winter (1959)

and

Louisa May Alcott (1832-1888)
C. S. Lewis (1898-1963)
Madeleine L'Engle (1918-2007)

Today's Birthdays

Jean-Baptiste Lully (1632-1687)
Ferdinand Ries (1784-1838)
Anton Rubinstein (1829-1894)
Pamela Harrison (1915-1990)
Randy Newman (1943)
Diedre Murray (1951)

and

John Bunyan (1628-1688)
William Blake (1757-1827)
Friedrich Engels (1820-1895)

Today's Birthdays

Chiara Margarita Cozzolani (1602-1678)
Franz Krommer (1759 - 1831)
Sir Julian Benedict (1804-1885)
Charles Koechlin (1867-1950)
Leon Barzin (1900-1999)
Walter Klien (1928-1991)
Helmut Lachenmann (1935)
Jimi Hendrix (1942-1970)
David Felder (1953)
Victoria Mullova (1959)
Hilary Hahn (1979)

and

Anders Celsius (1701-1744)
Charles Beard (1874–1948)
James Agee (1909-1955)
Marilyn Hacker (1942)
Bill Nye (1955)

Today's Birthdays

Earl Wild (1915-2010)
Eugene Istomin (1925-2003)
John Sanders (1933-2003)
Craig Sheppard (1947)
Vivian Tierney (1957)
Spencer Topel (1979)

and

Eugene Ionesco (1909-1994)
Marilynne Robinson (1943)

Today's Birthdays

Sergei Taneyev (1856-1915)
Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991)
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Sir John Drummond (1934-2006)
Jean-Claude Malgoire (1940)
Håkan Hagegård (1945)
Yvonne Kenny (1950)
Gilles Cachemaille (1951)

and

Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919)

Today'

Wilhelm Kempff (1895-1991)
Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)
Sir John Drummond (1934-2006)
Jean-Claude Malgoire (1940)
Håkan Hagegård (1945)
Yvonne Kenny (1950)
Gilles Cachemaille (1951)

Today's Birthdays

Scott Joplin (1868-1917)
Norman Walker (1907-1963)
Erik Bergman (1911)
Alfred Schnittke (1934-1998)
Maria Chiara (1939)
Chinary Ung (1942)
Tod Machover (1953)
Jouni Kaipainen (1956)
Edgar Meyer (1960)
Angelika Kirchschlager (1965)

and

Laurence Sterne (1713-1768)
Arundhati Roy (1961)

Today's Birthdays

Pierre Du Mage (1674-1751)
Manuel de Falla (1876-1946)
Jerry Bock (1928-2010)
Vigen Derderian (1929-2003)
Krzysztof Penderecki (1933)
Ludovico Einaudi (1955)
Thomas Zehetmair (1961)
Nicolas Bacri (1961)
Ed Harsh (1962)

and

Paul Celan (1920-1950)
Jennifer Michael Hecht (1965)

From the Writer's Almanac:

It was on this day in 1889 that the Jukebox made its debut at the Palais Royale Saloon in San Francisco. It consisted of an Edison Class M Electric Phonograph inside an oak cabinet with tubes sticking out, and by depositing a coin you could listen to the recording through the tube. In its first six months of service, the Nickel-in-the-Slot earned more than $1,000.

But for a long time, the coin-operated player pianos were more popular, because they had better sound and no static. It wasn't until 1927 that the Automatic Musical Instruments Company introduced the first jukebox that sounded good enough to entertain an entire room.

The word "jukebox" comes from the word "jook" — meaning disorderly or wicked — which probably came to this country from West Africa. In the years after slavery, African-Americans used the phrase "juke house" or "juke joint" to refer to dancehalls, and when these dancehalls installed coin-operated phonographs, they were called jukeboxes.

At a time when many early radio programs refused to play country, blues, or jazz, it was jukeboxes that made that music available in taverns, restaurants, diners, and on Army bases. And music companies realized there was a big audience for different genres of music.

Willie Nelson said, "Ninety-nine percent of the world's lovers are not with their first choice. That's what makes the jukebox play."

Today's Birthdays

St. Cecilia
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach (1710-1784)
Edgard Varèse (1883-1965)
Hoagy Carmichael (1899-1981)
Joaquin Rodrigo (1901-1999)
Benjamin Britten (1913-1976)
Gunther Schuller (1925)
Jimmy Knepper (1927-2003)
Hans Zender (1936)
Kent Nagano (1951)
Stephen Hough (1961)
Sumi Jo (1962)

and

George Eliot (1819-1880)
André Gide (1869-1951)

Today's Birthdays

Henry Purcell (1659-1695)
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Coleman Hawkins (1904-1969)
Bernard Lagacé (1930)
Malcolm Williamson (1931-2003)
James DePreist (1936)
Idil Biret (1941)
Vinson Cole (1950)
Kyle Gann (1955)
Stewart Wallace (1960)
Björk (1965)

and

Voltare (1694-1778)
René Magritte (1898-1967)
Marilyn French (1929-2009)

Today's Birthdays

René Kolo (1937)
Gary Karr (1941)
Meredith Monk (1942)
Phillip Kent Bimstein (1947)
Barbara Hendricks (1948)

and

Nadine Gordimer (1923)
Maya Plisetskaya (1925)
Don DeLillo, (1936)

Today's Birthdays

Friedrich Wilhelm Zachow (1663-1712)
Mikhail Ippolitov-Ivanov (1859-1935)
Jean‑Yves Daniel‑Lesur (1908-2002)
Géza Anda (1921-1976)
Maralin Niska (1926)
David Lloyd-Jones (1934)
Agnes Baltsa (1944)
Ross Bauer (1951)

and

Allen Tate (1899-1979)
Sharon Olds (1942)

Today's Birthdays

Jean‑Baptiste Loeillet (1680-1730)
Carl Maria von Weber (1786-1826)
Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941)
Amelita Galli‑Curci (1882-1963)
Eugene Ormandy (1899-1985)
Lillian Fuchs (1901-1995)
Compay Segundo (1907-2003)
Johnny Mercer (1909-1976)
Don Cherry (1936)
Heinrich Schiff (1951)
Bernard d'Ascoli (1958)

and

Louis Daguerre (1787–1851)
W.S (William Schwenck) Gilbert (1836-1911)
Margaret Atwood (1939)

Terrific 3-year-old conductor

This kids has all of the moves. Big thanks to Bob Priest who sent the link:

Today's Birthdays

Ernest Lough (1911-2000)
Leonid Kogan (1924-1982)
Sir Charles Mackerras (1925-2010)
David Amram (1930)
Gene Clark (1941-1991)
Philip Picket (1950)
Philip Grange (1956)

Today's Birthdays

Rodolphe Kreutzer (1766-1831)
W. C. Handy (1873-1958)
Paul Hindemith (1895-1963)
Burnet Tuthill (1888-1982)
Lawrence Tibbett (1896-1960)
Earl Wild (1915-2010)
David Wilson-Johnson (1950)
Donald Runnicles (1954)

and

George S. Kaufman (1889-1961)
Andrea Barrett (1954)

Today's Birthdays

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (1905-1980)
Petula Clark (1932)
Peter Dickinson (1934)
Daniel Barenboim (1942)
Pierre Jalbert (1967)

and

Gerhart Hauptmann (1862-1946)
Georgia O'Keefe (1887-1986)
Marianne Moore (1887-1972)

Today's Birthdays

Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778-1837)
Fanny Hensel (1805-1847)
Rev. John Curwen (1816-1880)
Aaron Copland (1900-1990)
Leonie Rysanek (1926-1998)
Jorge Bolet (1914-1990)
Narciso Yepes (1927-1997)
Robert Lurtsema (1931-2000)
Ellis Marsalis (1934)
Peter Katin (1930)
William Averitt (1948)

and

Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002)

Oregon Symphony to hit the road

The Oregon Symphony will be in Tacoma tomorrow afternoon to play Ravel, Mozart, Elgar, and Walton. The concert takes place at 3 pm and tickets start at $19. The orchestra's appearance is presented by the Tacoma Philharmonic. Click here for more information.

Today's Birthdays

Jan Zach (1699 - 1773)
Louis Lefébure-Wély (1817-1870)
Brinley Richards (1817-1885)
George Whitefield Chadwick (1854-1931)
Marguerite Long (1874-1966)
Joonas Kokkoken (1921-1996)
Lothar Zagrosek (1942)
Martin Bresnick (1946)

and

St. Augustine (354-430)
Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)

Today's Birthdays

Alexander Borodin (1833-1887
Jean Papineau-Couture (1916-2000)
Michael Langdon (1920-1991)
Lucia Popp (1939-1993)
Neil Young (1945)

and

Roland Barthes (1915-1980)
Michael Ende (1929-1995)
Tracy Kidder (1945)

PS: Courtesy of New Music Box:

On November 12, 1925, cornetist Louis Armstrong made the first recordings with a group under his own name for Okeh Records in Chicago, Illinois. The group, called Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, recorded his original compositions, "Gut Bucket Blues" and "Yes! I'm In The Barrel" (Okeh 8261) as well as "My Heart" composed by his wife Lil Hardin who was the pianist in the band. (The flipside of the 78rpm record on which the latter was issued, Okeh 8320, was "Armstrong's composition "Cornet Chop Suey" recorded three months later on February 26, 1926.) Armstrong's Hot Five and subsequent Hot Seven recordings are widely considered to be the earliest masterpieces of recorded jazz.

Sad Day: Gorecki Dies at 76

This sad news from the AP: famed Polish composer Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki has died at his home in Katowice after a serious illness.

Today's Birthdays

Bernhard Romberg (1767-1841)
Ernest Ansermet (1883-1969)
Jan Simons (1925-2006)
Arthur Cunningham (1928-1997)
Vernon Handley (1930)
Harry Bramma (1936)
Jennifer Bate (1944)
Naji Hakim (1955)
Fang Man (1977)

and

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881)
Kurt Vonnegut (1922-2007)
Carlos Fuentes (1928)

Today's Birthdays

Martin Luther (1483-1546)
François Couperin (1668-1733
Graham Clark (1941)
Sir Tim Rice (1944)
Andreas Scholl (1967)

and

Oliver Goldsmith (1730 - 1774)
Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805)

Today's Birthdays

Pierrette Alarie (1921)
Piero Cappuccilli (1929-2005)
Ivan Moravec (1930)
William Thomas McKinley (1938)
Thomas Quasthoff (1959)
Bryn Terfel (1965)

and

Ivan Turgenev (1818-1883)
Hugh Leonard (1926-2009)
Anne Sexton (1928-1974)
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)

Opposing reviews of Kalmar and the San Francisco Symphony

Carlos Kalmar conducted the San Francisco Symphony last week, and you can read this very positive review in San Francisco Classical Voice or this negative one in the San Francisco Chronicle. Ah, the beauty of people with opinions...

Current writings in print

On the front page of this month's Hollywood Star newspaper is a fine piece on Live Wire, which was written by my Northwest Reverb colleague Lorin Wilkerson.

The November/December edition of the American Record Guide features my review of the Oregon Bach Festival.

Opera magazine's November edition has my review of Wozzeck that was performed at the Astoria Music Festival.

The Columbian newspaper published my preview piece on the Vancouver Symphony (WA) concert. Unfortunately, it is availble only in the print edition of the paper.

Today's Birthdays

Sir Arnold Bax (1883-19530
Lamberto Gardelli (1915-1938)
Jerome Hines (1921-2003)
Richard Stoker (1938)
Simon Standage (1941)
Judith Zaimont (1945)
Tadaaki Otaka (1947)
Elizabeth Gale (1948)
Bonnie Raitt (1949)
Ana Vidović (1980)

and

Dorothy Day (1897-1980)
Margaret Mitchell (1900-1949)

Today's Birthdays

Efrem Kurtz (1900-1995)
William Alwyn (1905-1985)
Al Hirt (1922-1999)
Dame Joan Sutherland (1926-2010)
Dame Gwyneth Jones (1937)
Joni Mitchell (1943)
Judith Forst (1943)
Christina Viola Oorebeek (1944_

and

Albert Camus (1913-1960)

Today's Birthdays

Adolphe Sax (1814-1894)
John Philip Sousa (1854-1932)
Don Lusher (1923-2006)
James Bowman (1941)
Arturo Sandoval (1949)
Daniele Gatti (1961)

and

Robert Musil (1880-1942)
Harold Ross (1892-1951)
James Jones (1921-1977)

Today's Birthdays

Hans Sachs (1494-1576)
Paul Wittgenstein (1887-1961)
Walter Gieselking (1895-1956)
Claus Adam (1917-1983)
György Cziffra (1921-1994)
Nicholas Maw (1935-2009)
Anthony Rolfe Johnson (1940)
Art Garfunkel (1941)
Gram Parsons (1946-1973)

and

Ida M. Tarbell (1867-1944)
Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918)
Sam Shephard (1943)
Vandana Shiva (1952)

Bjoerling's Larynx - Blue Sky Gallery

Portland Opera and Blue Sky Gallery (122 NW 8th Ave., Portland) join forces for a very special event in conjunction with their November show of David Leventi's photographs of the world's great opera houses in a dramatic body of work titled "Bjoerling's Larynx."

This Saturday, November 6th at 2 pm, Leventi will discuss his work with Portland Opera's general director, Christopher Mattaliano. This event is free.

Today's Birthdays

Arnold Cooke (1906-2005)
Elgar Howarth (1935)
Joan Rodgers (1956)
Elena Kats-Chernin (1957)
Daron Hagen (1961)

and

Will Rogers (1879-1935)
C. K. Williams (1936)
Charles Frazier (1950)

From the New Music Box:

On November 4, 1964, Terry Riley's In C was first performed at the San Francisco Tape Music Center by an ensemble including Steve Reich, Pauline Oliveros, Ramon Sender, Morton Subotnick and Jon Gibson. In a review published in the San Francisco Chronicle four days later which was the first published acknowledgement of minimalist music, Alfred Frankenstein hailed "On C" [sic] as a masterpiece, writing: "At times you feel you have never done anything all your life long but listen to this music and as if that is all there is or ever will be but it is altogether absorbing, exciting, and moving, too."

Today's Birthdays

Samuel Scheidt (1587-1654)
Vincenzio Bellini (1801-1835)

and

Benvenuto Cellini (1500-1571)
William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878)
Walker Evans (1903-1975)
Terrence McNally (1939)

Today's Birthdays

Unico Wilhelm van Wassenaer (1692-1766)
Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf (1739-1799)
John Foulds (1880-1939)
Luchino Visconti (1906-1976)
Douglas Lilburn (1915-2001)
Guiseppe Sinopoli (1946-2001)
Jeremy Menuhin (1951)
Marie McLaughlin (1954)
Paul Moravec (1957)

Today's Birthdays

Roger Quilter (1877-1953)
Eugen Jochum (1902-1987)
Bruno Bjelinski (1909-1992)
Victoria de Los Angeles (1923-2005)
William Mathias (1934-1992)
Lyle Lovett (1957)

and

Stephen Crane (1871-1900)
A. R. Gurney (1930)
Edward Said (1935-2003)

Today's Birthdays

August Everding (1928-1999)
Colin Tilney (1933)
Odaline de la Martinez (1949)

and

Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)
John Keats (1795-1821)
Susan Orlean (1955)

from The New Music Box:

On October 31, 1896, the Boston Symphony premiered the Gaelic" Symphony in E Minor by Mrs. H.H.A. Beach (Amy Marcy Cheney Beach), the first symphony by an American woman ever publicly performed.

CD Review: Portland Opera's 'Orphee'

This year saw a milestone in the Portland Opera's history with their first-ever commercial recording, a complete rendering of Philip Glass's Orphee. Recorded during Orphee's run in November of 2009, the surprise hit of Portland Opera's last season transfers admirably to this disc from Orange Mountain Music. Not only is this CD a first for the PO, but it is doubly important in that it is also the first complete recording of this opera, the last of Glass's triptych based on films by Jean Cocteau to be put to disc.

The production benefited from the previous experience with this work brought to the fore by conductor Anne Manson and principals Philip Cutlip (Orphee) and Lisa Saffer (La Princesse), all of whom performed this previously with the Glimmerglass Opera. The recording succeeds brillantly in capturing the crispness and concision of the dialogue, which was adapted by Glass from the script for the 1949 Cocteau film of the same name. Cutlip's rich, expressive baritone and soprano Lisa Saffer's moody Princesse seem to leap out from the recording with their sincerity and intensity. The dialogue moves along as in a film; i.e. no long expressive arias, so the singers have the challenge of both continuously advancing the plot while delivering enjoyable listening from a musical standpoint.

The oft-mysterious framework provided by Glass's orchestral underpinning comes through in delicious color, from the hurly-burly French cafe music to be found in the opening scene to the dark mystery of the journey to the underworld, and the ceaseless movement of the music seems to command rapt attention. Particularly poignant are the tender moments between tenor Ryan MacPherson as Heurtebise and Georgia Jarman as Eurydice, Orphee's sometimes-scorned wife, as well as Orphee's obsessive madness with the cryptic radio broadcasts that he takes to be the finest poetry in the world. The heart-rending decision by Heurtebise and La Princesse to defy the will of the underworld and return their loves to their former lives after the harrowing journey beyond the doors of death is as inspiring and beautiful as one could hope opera to be. As a side-note, the French diction is marvelously clear throughout.

Portland Opera has distinguished itself by releasing such a meaningful, high-quality recording by one of the world's most important living composers. In short, this is a brilliant recording of a brilliant work. It is one that will bear repeated listening, with new facets to be discovered at each turn.

Today's Birthdays

André Messager (1853-1929)
Elizabeth Sprague Coolidge (1864-1953)
Alfred Einstein (1880-1952)
Dmitri Kabalevsky (1904-1987)
Sir David Willcocks (1919)
Bruno Canino (1935)
June Anderson (1950)
Antonio Pappano (1959)

and

Theodor Fontane (1819-1898)
Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Ezra Pound (1885-1972)
Robert Caro (1935)

From the New Music Box:

On October 30, 1935, the Composers' Forum-Laboratory, designed to provide an outlet or American composers during the Great Depression, opened in New York with a program of music by Roy Harris. The Forum was an outgrowth of the Federal Music Project, a division of the Work Projects Administration, which was established as a national agency on May 6, 1935, by an executive order of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. At its peak in 1936, the FMP, which began as a distinct division of the WPA on August 1, 1935 as a means to provide work for unemployed American musicians, involved a total of 15,000 musicians.

Today's Birthdays

Harold Darke (1888-1976)
Vivian Ellis (1904-1996)
Václav Neumann (1920-1995)
Jon Vickers (1926)
James Dillon (1950)
Lee Actor (1952)
James Primosch (1956)

and

James Boswell (1740-1795)
David Remnick (1958)

Today's Birthdays

Giuditta Pasta (1797-1865)
Howard Hanson (1896-1981)
Dame Cleo Laine (1927)
Carl Davis (1936)
Howard Blake (1938)
Kenneth Montgomery (1943)
Naida Cole (1974)

and

Evelyn Waugh (1903-1966)
John Harold Hewitt (1907-1987)
Francis Bacon (1909-1992)
John Hollander (1929)

The newest performance space

Even though the newly renovated Lincoln Recital Hall is getting all the raves, it's actually not the newest improvement in Portland's performance landscape. The latest addition in performance spaces belongs to Rose City Park Presbyterian Church (1907 NE 45th Avenue), which has dramatically altered its sanctuary so that its acoustics are much, much better for concerts. I got to experience that first-hand when I sang with the Bach Cantata Choir in its first concert of the season on Sunday afternoon. The choir could hear each other and the orchestra way better than before, and the audience thought that our sound was much better as well. In any case, other groups should consider looking at this space for future performance opportunities.

Today's Birthdays

Niccolò Paganini (1782-1840)
Helmut Walcha (1907-1991)
Conlon Nancarrow (1912-1997)
Dominick Argento (1927)
Julius Eastman (1940-1990)
Håkan Hardenberger (1961)
Vanessa-Mae (1978)

and

Lee Krasner (1908-1994)
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997)
Sylvia Plath (1932-1963)

Today's Birthdays

Hans Leo Hassler (1564-1612)
Domenico Scarlatti (1685-1757)
Mahalia Jackson (1911-1972)
György Pauk (1936)
Christine Brewer (1955)
Natalie Merchant (1963)
Sakari Oramo (1965)

and

Andrew Motion (1952)

Today's Birthdays

Thomas Weelkes (1576-1623)
Johann Strauss II (1825-1899)
Georges Bizet (1838-1875)
Galina Vishnevskaya (1926)
Peter Lieberson (1946)
Diana Burrell (1948)
Colin Carr (1957)
Midori (1971)

and

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
John Berryman (1914-1972)
Anne Tyler (1941)

Today's Birthdays

Ferdinand Hiller (1811-1885)
Conrad Leonard (1898-2003)
Paul Csonka (1905-1995)
Tito Gobbi (1913-1984)
Luciano Berio (1925-2003)
George Crumb (1929)
Sofia Gubaidulina (1931)
Malcolm Bilson (1935)
Bill Wyman (1936)
George Tsontakis (1951)
Cheryl Studer (1955)

and

Moss Hart (1904-1961)
Denise Levertov (1923-1997)
Norman Rush (1933)