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This time each year, Eugene respectfully steps back and offers the stage to the Oregon Bach Festival. And no wonder: The 44-year-old classical music institution abounds with so many attractive performances, workshops, lectures and other events that we couldn’t even begin to cover them all in last week’s issue. Here’s a rundown of some remaining top recommendations. Jonathan Manson, Cello Continue reading
It takes the right combination of craziness and courage to walk away from the fame game at its peak. But in 2007, Jurassic 5 did exactly that. Feedback (2006) reached No. 6 in Billboard’s U.S. rap record sales, securing Jurassic 5’s status as pioneers of alternative hip hop. Seven years later, the same cats known for jazz sampling, scatting, multiple live MCs and even the occasional kazoo solo are once again ready to take you “back to the concrete streets,” as they rap in their 1999 self-titled LP. Continue reading
The last bro standing from the ’90s jam band/groove-rock scene (Sublime, Dave Matthews, Blues Traveler et al.), Garrett Dutton, better known as G. Love of G. Love & Special Sauce, is way too chill to care much about superstardom. Instead, G. Love & Special Sauce continues to bring danceable, reggae- and hip-hop-inflected blues rock to the masses. G. Love’s latest, 2014’s Sugar, is more of the same. Continue reading
On record, San Francisco’s Geographer is somewhat blunted by an ambition to sound thoroughly “now,” to fit into whatever mold successful modern rock bands are expected to fit into in these wild and wooly days of making music. Live, Geographer is as raw as twiddling knobs on computer equipment can be, but vocalist Michael Deni adds interest by switching between guitar and loops, while Nathan Blaz supplies keyboards and electric cello and drummer Brian Ostreicher provides a needed punch and danceable energy. Continue reading
Sculptor Ian Beyer tells me with a wry smile that his sister, painter Erika Beyer, is the smart one, what with her dual college degrees in scientific illustration and architecture. This is the sort of affectionate ribbing that commonly passes between siblings; what’s not so common is the level of talent that unifies the Beyers in their separate creative endeavors. Continue reading
The godfather of glass pipes works in a bus down by the Willamette River — make that a 1940s bus and a semi trailer outfitted with several workstations. Inside the bus, torch blazing, Bob Snodgrass focuses on a golden glass mushroom inside a pendant. Continue reading
In Kelly Reichardt’s new film, Night Moves, a ragged trio of would-be eco-saboteurs plot to blow up a hydroelectric dam in western Oregon. There is Josh (Jesse Eisenberg), a steely young man full of sidelong glances and inarticulate rage; Dena (Dakota Fanning), a doe-eyed rich girl levitating on hippie zen; and Harmon (Peter Sarsgaard), the elder, who emanates the cool, malevolent calm of nihilism. Continue reading
What would you do with a room full of 80 teenagers? Turn on the television? Order pizza? Lock the door and run for cover? At the Oregon Bach Festival, the standard approach to the younger set is treat them like musicians, and allow them to soar. OBF offers a number of kid-friendly events, but none is more moving than the renowned Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy. Continue reading
When I was a boy, my father, a former music teacher, joked: “There’s nothing worth listening to beyond Bach. Bach wrote it all first.” But I was a child of pop music and, in the words of Morrissey, classical music said “nothing to me about my life.” Continue reading
When Matthew Halls steps to the podium to conduct the Oregon Bach Festival’s June 26 opening performance, it will mark the first time since its founding in 1970 that anyone other than founder Helmuth Rilling has directed the annual summer festival. That opening work, Monteverdi’s Vespers of 1610, commonly regarded as the first Baroque masterpiece, makes an appropriate accession because the 38-year-old British conductor’s assumption of the artistic director post signals a generational change. Continue reading