Eugene Weekly

On July 6, the Oregon Bach Festival chorus sang a sweet surprise 80th birthday gift for retiring founding music director Helmuth Rilling — an “Alleluia” commissioned from the great contemporary Scottish composer James MacMillan, who’s working on a big new commission for the 2016 festival. It’s a treat to see the OBF returning to sparking the creation of new music, as it did for a while every other year, resulting in major works by Arvo Pärt, Osvaldo Golijov and other composers. Continue reading →

Most ’90s alternative bands have long since disappeared — be it from lack of interest, internal discord, deaths or other unforeseen circumstances — but Collective Soul is one of the few who have continued on in spite of such troubles. Lineup changes have occurred, they’re no longer a chart-topping member of Atlantic Records and it seems like eons ago that they achieved the distinction of producing more No. 1 rock radio hits than any other band in the post-grunge era, but they are definitely alive and kicking. Continue reading →

It’s high time the county fair became hip again. As society changes, the annual celebration of all things rural faces well-documented challenges. But in the age of Etsy and Pinterest, when cross-stitch, pickling and DIY chicken coops are all the rage, the county fair seems to have its finger on the zeitgeist. I mean, where else can you find a table-setting competition?  Continue reading →

Miwa Nishio has recently started listening to The Carpenters again, and for the first time, she knows what Karen and Richard are crooning about.  “When I was little I used to sing along but I had no idea what the words were,” she says. Nishio grew up in Kyushu, Japan. While most kids were following Japanese pop music, Nishio was singing along to her parents’ records, namely The Carpenters and The Beatles. “I was definitely one of those weirdo kids in the neighborhood,” she says over the phone from her Brooklyn, N.Y., home. Continue reading →

I remember commuting to a soul-eating server job in Minneapolis I had post-college graduation. It was one of those faux fancy steak-and-seafood joints where businessmen come for lunch in business suits to talk business and inhale their food without looking at it. Servers might as well have been robots for the amount of eye contact exchanged. Continue reading →

I’d love to have been a fly on the wall when the collaboration between perpetually cool David Byrne and doe-eyed avant-pop upstart St. Vincent was hatched. If you aren’t familiar with Byrne, let me first waggle a disapproving finger at you, and then list his resume: “Once in a Lifetime,” Stop Making Sense, “Burning Down the House” and “Psycho Killer” to only skim the surface.  Continue reading →

The last time EW checked in with the rollicking indie-grass rockers The Harmed Brothers was in the summer of 2010; hot off Cottage Grove’s Jug-R-Not festival, the band was about to kick-off a cross-country tour. Ray Vietti (guitar, vocals) and Alex Salcido (banjo, vocals, harmonica, piano) are still the faces of the band, but a lot has changed in the past three years. Continue reading →

Legacies can be a blessing or a curse. How often do you see children wilt under the pressure of trying to be just like their parents? Can you imagine the number of times Holly Williams has been compared to her father and grandfather, Hank Jr. and Hank Sr., throughout her life? But Williams has risen to the challenge over the last decade and established herself as a notable singer-songwriter on her own merits.  Continue reading →

It’s easy to overlook some of the hidden — and often less expensive — gems amid the many choral and orchestral treasures the Oregon Bach Festival offers each summer. Continue reading →