MUSIC
BY BRETT CAMPBELL
UO GOSPEL SINGERS
A MASSIVE
MONTH OF MUSIC
From a UO megarecital to a free MLK
concert and Portland’s top singers
M
ost people think of the University of Oregon’s
contribution to our community’s creativity as
primarily educational. But many of its faculty
members perform, and this Thursday, Jan. 14,
at 7:30 pm, a passel of them will be strutting
their onstage skills at the school’s Beall Concert Hall for
MASSIVE: A UO Megarecital.
The most familiar piece in the admirably offbeat
megarecital (few big music institutions have the courage,
or the financial cushion, to program an unfamiliar
repertoire) is Stravinsky’s wryly devilish A Soldier’s Story,
which features not only a septet of top-flight music profs
but also dance faculty members Brad Garner and
Shannon Mockli choreographing and performing original
dance. The Oregon Wind Quintet plays a real rarity,
Hungarian composer Endre Szervánszky’s 1953 Wind
Quintet No. 1, while another faculty trio performs composer
Frank Ticheli’s enchanting “Songs of Tagore,” and a dozen
others play German composer Paul Hindemith’s colorful
1930 Concert Music for Piano, Brass and Harp.
UO students also get their chance to shine at Beall as both
performers and composers. At 3 pm Monday, Jan. 18 (MLK
Day), the UO Gospel Singers celebrate Dr. King with a free
show that focuses on Afro-Cuban song, dance and percussion.
At 8 pm Wednesday, Jan. 20, the superb soprano Estelí
Gomez returns to sing music by student composers as
part of a residency in which she mentors and works with
them. And at 7:30 pm Tuesday, Jan. 26, the Oregon
Composers Forum premieres still more student chamber
music by ten UO composers.
That same night at Oregon Contemporary Theatre, the
former UO students who constitute most of the Delgani
String Quartet perform with orator Rickie Birran from
Man of Words Theatre Company. The highly recommended
show mixes literary readings from Paradise Lost, Don
Quixote and more with music by Telemann and Webern,
and newly commissioned works by the terrific Eugene
composer Paul Safar.
Still another UO alum, Douglas Jenkins, founded and,
until recently, led Portland Cello Project, which returns
to town at Hi-Fi Music Hall 8 pm Saturday, Jan. 23,
performing hip hop, classical, pop music and much more in
inventive arrangements for cello. Jenkins still plays in and
arranges pop and other music for the all-cello band, now
directed by Skip vonKuske, which draws enthusiastic
crowds at over a hundred dates a year all around the
country. Also on Saturday, you can
hear contemporary Hawaiian music
by two of its great masters, Keola
Beamer and Henry Kapono, at
7:30 pm at The Shedd.
Along with all these 21st-century
sounds, you can hear older music
around town next week. At 8 pm
Thursday, Jan. 21, at the Hult Center,
Giancarlo Guerrero returns to the
Eugene Symphony to lead his old
band for the first time since leaving
the ESO music director position to
take over the Nashville Symphony
in 2009. The charismatic Guerrero
won widespread acclaim for leading
the orchestra in performances and
recordings of contemporary music,
so it’s disappointing that this show eschews 21st-century
music for 20th-century works by Italian composer Ottorino
Respighi (Fountains of Rome and Pines of Rome) and
Maurice Duruflé’s Requiem, performed with the ESO’s
choir.
Even earlier music is on the program 7 pm Saturday,
Jan. 23, at Central Lutheran Church when the superb
small vocal ensemble called, uh, The Ensemble
(composed of the top singers from Portland’s many fine
choirs), joins members of the Portland early music group
Musica Maestrale in a concert performance of the
glorious music from one of the greatest of all English
operas, Henry Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas, plus music from
an even earlier English Baroque work, John Blow’s Venus
and Adonis. It’s the top recommendation of the month.
On the afternoon of Sunday, Jan. 24, the historically
informed period-instrument musicians of Oregon Bach
Collegium play still more Baroque music (by Telemann
and J.S. Bach) at United Lutheran Church. ■
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Oregon Music
Education Association
2016 ALL-STATE CONCERTS
Silva Hall • Hult Center
ALL-STATE MIDDLE SCHOOL
Friday 1/15/2016, 5:00 PM
$10-Includes admission to all four concerts
5:00 P.M. - Band / Gillian MacKay, Conductor
5:45 P.M. - Orchestra / Stephen Benham, Conductor
6:30 P.M. – Boy’s Choir /Richard Nace, Conductor
7:15 P.M. – Girl’s Choir / Therees Hibbard, Conductor
ALL-STATE HIGH SCHOOL
Sunday 1/17/2016, 1:00 PM
$15-Includes admission to all five concerts
1:00 P.M. - Symphonic Band /
Marcellus Brown, Conductor
2:00 P.M. - Wind Ensemble /
Allan McMurray, Conductor
3:00 P.M. - Orchestra / David Commanday, Conductor
4:00 P.M. - Women’s Choir / Edith Copley, Conductor
5:00 P.M. - Men’s Choir / Kevin Fenton, Conductor
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eugeneweekly.com • January 14, 2016
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