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• The Cottage Grove Blackberry Pie Society will host Lane County Sheriff Byron Trapp and Cottage Grove Interim Police Chief Scott Shepherd from 6:30 to 8 pm Thursday, March 31, in the Reception Room at the Cottage Grove Community Center, 700 E. Gibbs, Cottage Grove. Free and open to the public. Email blackberrypie@gmail.com for more information. Continue reading
Farewell John Evans. The former Oregon Bach Festival director (2006-2014) and head of music for the BBC’s classical network passed away from a heart attack March 20, reports Slipped Disc, a classical music site, and Eugene Art Talk, a site by local arts writer Bob Keefer. Evans was 62. Originally from the UK, Evans was a preeminent scholar of British composer Benjamin Britten. He compiled the 2009 book Journeying Boy: The Diaries of the Young Benjamin Britten 1928-1938. Continue reading
• Saturday Market and Farmers Market will open their seasons Saturday, April 2, at the Park Blocks downtown. This hub of community activity will feature artisans, chefs, musicians and community members gathering to celebrate art, life and veggies in the southern Willamette Valley. Saturday Market will be open 33 Saturdays, more than 400 artisans will sell more than $1.5 million worth of handcrafted wares, nearly 500 local musicians will play on the stage and around the market, and 15 food booths will draw hungry crowds. Continue reading
Jumpshots From Israel I have lived in Israel for more than seven months now and I struggle to reconcile many residents’ opinions with current events and accounts of history. Eager to find opposing viewpoints — and not apt to withhold my own — I’m familiar with the proverbial “you’ll understand when you’re older.” Perhaps. Or perhaps one man’s naiveté is another’s objectivity. I keep wrestling with these arguments, nonetheless. Continue reading
DONE WITH HIDING The fencing of places where homeless people camp isn’t really about trash. If it was, the city would be providing trashcans and portable potties at locations all over Eugene, along with a lot more managed shelter. Instead it spends money on services that people have to walk to, carrying all of their possessions, and policing to keep them from camping. Continue reading
It is a truth universally acknowledged that superhero movies must feature massive amounts of property damage. Rather hilariously, we are all spending a lot of time talking about this, not about cool fight scenes (harder and harder to come by) or daring ways our heroes have saved the day. Continue reading
When the Eugene Symphony chose a young, little-known conductor named Marin Alsop as its music director in 1989, both she and the orchestra were at best marginal micro-planets orbiting the farthest reaches of the American classical music solar system. By the time Alsop left in 1996, the New York native was one of classical music’s rising stars, crashing through a series of glass ceilings in a seriously sexist classical music milieu to score a handful of increasingly prestigious gigs with orchestras around the world, from São Paulo to Scotland. Continue reading
The Minneapolis-based Davina and the Vagabonds have swagger — circa 1920s swagger, the kind found in the midst of big-band jazz and the blues. It was 2011 when Davina Sowers (vocals, piano, ukulele) put out her first full-length album, Black Cloud, and she and the Vagabonds have been crashing to the top of the modern blues scene ever since, winning accolades like one of the 10 top releases of the year (Minneapolis Star Tribune). Continue reading
"Bang," "quack" and "sizzle" are onomatopoeias. If a band name were ever onomatopoeic, it would be Mexico-via-L.A.’s Metalachi — the self-proclaimed first and only heavy metal mariachi band in the world. Lead singer Vega De La Rockha calls the band’s blend of traditional Mexican music with hard rock and metal a genre of its own. “El Cucuy [trumpet player] is very fond of the ranchera sound,” La Rockha tells EW. “Pancho [guitarron player] is a fan of both genres.” Continue reading
$1.2 million. That’s how much money Oregon won’t receive this year from two federal agencies due to its failure to protect water quality from logging in coastal watersheds. According to Nina Bell of Northwest Environmental Advocates, “the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) have said for 18 years that Oregon’s logging practices create dangerous levels of water pollution and harm fish.” Continue reading