Pamplin Media Group – Bigger, better Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival coming up

It is themed ‘Inspirations & Influences’ and mixes composers and their sound and how they impact peers.

Themed “Inspirations & Influences,” the 52nd annual Chamber Music Northwest Summer Festival boasts music from around the world and shares the collective “musical fabric,” the artistic directors said.

“Our world is full of beautifully diverse cultures that are interconnected in remarkable ways,” said Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim, the husband-wife artistic director duo. “The exchange of ideas between people from different parts of the world has created a vibrant musical fabric that today’s composers continue to use in their fresh creations.

“We will explore and celebrate ways in which composers are impacted by their peers while retaining their own distinct voices. Composers and their pieces will often ‘talk’ to each other on these programs,” which include:

Claude Debussy’s harmonic liberation leading to George Crumb’s wildly colorful orchestration of Black American surplus; Maurice Ravel, Reena Ismail and Henry Cowell incorporating styles and tonalities of traditional music from Asia; and Melinda Wagner’s modern-day reimagining of one of the great works of the 17th century, Harry Purcell’s “Dido and Aeneas.”

The festival begins Saturday, June 25 with a gala event at Portland Art Museum and goes through July 31 with programming around the Portland area with more than 60 concerts and community events. Chien and Kim are part of several evenings of music, and the July 31 closing concert.

Venues include Reed College, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, Portland State University, Alberta Rose Theatre, The Armory and free community concerts in Gresham, Milwaukie and Vancouver, Washington.

Longtime Portland publicist Nicole Lane works with Chamber Music Northwest on the Summer Festival and added: “It’s a huge festival. Giant. Biggest thing I’ve ever done and I’m trying to wrap my head around it.”

The festival will include five works commissioned or co-commissioned by Chamber Music Northwest: Alistair Coleman (“Flute Quintet”), Melinda Wagner (“Dido Reimagined”), Chris Rogerson (to be determined), David Schiff (“Vineyard Rhythms”) and Fang Man (to be determined).

There are two Sandbox Percussion concerts. The first is July 14-15, performing with baritone Lester Lynch in the late Crumb’s “A Journey Beyond Time — American Songbook II” that melds human voices with more than 100 instruments. The second is July 19, as part of [email protected]Portland-based composer Andy Akiho and Sandbox join forces with Seven Pillars, which fuses sound, light and movement.

The Protege Project brings back the likes of composer Coleman, violinist Zlatomir Fung, violinist Anna Lee and Viano String Quartet, and the Protege Artist Spotlight features rising stars Lee and Fung and Protege Project alum Benjamin Beilman.

For more information and a schedule, and for tickets, see cmnw.org.

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