Eugene Weekly

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 →

Get ready to feel some serious butterflies from the sensual rock tunes of Cape Cod’s Highly Suspect and Luz Elena Mendoza (of Y La Bamba) coming to WOW Hall April 9.  Mendoza has a wispy, sultry voice that will woo you into a trance. She’s also very Portland alt-rock. Her songs are stories that build by layering vocals with sometimes whimsical, sometimes dark, melodies. Now on her third album with Y La Bamba, Ojos Del Sol, Mendoza has a sound that is easy to swallow but at any given moment could send chills down your neck.  Continue reading →

G-Eazy is such a big deal that iconic rapper Lil Wayne remixed a song from his new album last week and NBA superstar Kobe Bryant greeted him at a recent Lakers game. On Billboard’s website, Nielsen Music charts hip-hop and R&B songs using a metric that calculates radio airplay, streaming and music sales. Each week since Feb. 20, G-Eazy’s “Me, Myself & I” ranked higher than any other rap song save Drake’s “Summer 16” and Rihanna’s “Work” (which also features Drake). 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 →

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 →

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 →