Eugene Weekly

What historically informed European musicians have done for Baroque music, James Ralph does for American musical theater. For years, the Oregon Festival of American Music (OFAM) impresario has been painstakingly supervising the reconstruction of the original scores of George and Ira Gershwin’s classic 1920s musicals, which have been performed for decades only in relatively bastardized remakes for stage or screen.  Continue reading →

While certain politicians make political hay by advocating divisions among Americans based on race, language and origin, artists and musicians are demonstrating the value of joining diverse American traditions.  On her new album Lola, Carrie Rodriguez, who performs at The Shedd June 7, embraces both sides of her heritage (Anglo and Latino), both sides of the divided Austin she grew up in and both English and Spanish — as a result, delivering a poignant folk-Americana triumph.  Continue reading →

Why wait for summer to take your international vacation when you can take a musical world tour this month right here in Eugene? First stop: Brazil, via the great Oregon saxophonist Tom Bergeron’s Brasil Band concert May 21 at The Jazz Station. World-renowned Rio de Janeiro pianist and composer Marvio Ciribelli has appeared at jazz festivals around the world, and Bergeron has worked with everyone from Anthony Braxton to Ella Fitzgerald and Robert Cray.  Continue reading →

Opera is hot in America these days. Despite the hidebound programming of most major opera companies endlessly recycling the tired old “top 10” 19th- and early 20th-century warhorses, today’s American composers are writing dozens of new operas — many based on American themes — and finding audiences both young and old. Continue reading →

Multi-culti is all the rage in music, food and the rest of today’s global culture. But mixing Latin American and European ingredients still felt pretty novel back in 1954, when Venezuelan composer Antonio Estévez wrote his colorful Cantata Criolla, which Eugene Concert Choir and Eugene Symphony will perform April 30 at the Hult Center’s Silva Hall. Continue reading →

Eugene has long been one of the beacons of so-called early music, which includes basically anything composed (in Europe) before J.S. Bach died and Mozart was born in the mid-18th century. The Oregon Bach Festival has been the big kahuna, but the city boasts an indie early music scene consisting of historically informed performance practice musicians in outfits like the Oregon Bach Collegium, Vox Resonat and the University of Oregon’s splendid early music program. 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 →

We usually hear one dimension of Peter Tchaikovsky: his melody-drenched ballet scores, especially that one that cracks up every Christmas. Continue reading →

Is another run through of Burt Bacharach’s music really what the world needs now? Continue reading →