“I hate ‘classical music:’ not the thing but the name. It traps a tenaciously living art in a theme park of the past. It cancels out the possibility that music in the spirit of Beethoven could still be created today. It banishes into limbo the work of thousands of active composers who have to explain to otherwise well-informed people what it is they do for a living.”
– Alex Ross

Thus begins Listen to This, our concert on January 26th with best-selling author and esteemed music critic Alex Ross, at the beautiful Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton.

I had the pleasure of doing a similar concert several years back with Alex, that time focusing on the music of west coast avant-garde composers. This time, we will cover a much more diverse and ambitious range of music! Alex narrates, and we play the music he describes.

I’ve always loved how context, whether it be venue or film, or in this case spoken word, affects how we hear music. While we don’t need to know the historical context of Aaron Copland’s populism in order to appreciate the genius of Appalachian Spring, or internalize how Florence Price dealt with the classical music patriarchy to appreciate the ingenuity and inherent beauty of her Folk Songs in Counterpoint, our experience hearing this music is undoubtedly richer for knowing the stories behind and people behind the music.

Our concert with Alex presents a one-of-a-kind opportunity to hear the top classical writer, in his own words, set the table for our performances. Our program features a stellar cast of PDX performers, and my sincere thanks to the following partners on this project:

• Chris Ayzoukian at the Reser Center for the Arts for co-producing this project with us
• Suzanne Nance and host Lynnsay Maynard at All Classical Radio for being our media sponsor and for Alex’s appearance on Lynnsay’s program Notebook
• Amanda Bullock and Andrew Proctor for producing a podcast featuring Alex and 45^th Parallel musicians

We look forward to seeing you at the Reser for this special program!

One more thing… I want to welcome Lisa Lipton to the 45^th Parallel family as our new executive director! We are grateful to be in such expert hands!

Ron Blessinger
Producer and Violinist, 45^th Parallel Universe

Program

György Ligeti: Three Bagatelles
Performers: Arcturus Quintet

“I am in a prison: one wall is the avant-garde, the other wall is the past, and I want to escape.”
– György Ligeti

Arcturus Quintet will perform Ligeti’s Bagatelles, three miniatures that captivate listeners with their kaleidoscopic range of colors and dynamic interplay.

Listen to the Carion Quintet’s performance here.

John Luther Adams: Maclaren Summit
Performers: Pyxis Quartet

“John Luther Adams has become a standard-bearer of American experimental music, of the tradition of solitary sonic tinkering that began on the West Coast almost a century ago and gained new strength after the Second World War, when John Cage and Morton Feldman created supreme abstractions in musical form. Talking about his work, Adams admits that it can sound strange, that it lacks familiar reference points, that it’s not exactly popular – by a twist of fate, he is sometimes confused with John Coolidge Adams, the creator of Nixon in China and the most widely performed of living American composers – and yet he’ll also say that it’s got something, or, at least, ‘It’s not nothing.‘“
– Alex Ross

Pyxis Quartet will perform Maclaren Summit by John Luther Adams, a breathtaking sonic portrayal of windswept expanses.

Listen to JACK Quartet’s recent recording here.

Richard Wagner: Wo in Bergen du dich birgst from Walküre
Performers: Maria Garcia and Hannah Penn

“‘Fricka knows.’ Thea Kronborg, the magisterial young American Singer at the heart of Willa Cather’s 1959 novel The Song of the Lark, is discussing the role of Wotan’s wife, in the Ring. Modeled on the turn-of-the-century soprano Olive Fremstad, Kronborg is bound for a starry career as a Wagner soprano, and although she has yet to essay Brünnhilde or Isolde she is winning acclaim as Venus and Elisabeth in Tannhäuser, as Sieglinde in Walküre, and as Fricka in Rheingold. The last role is seemingly the least interesting of the lot. ‘Fricka is not an alluring part,’ says Kronborg’s friend Fred Ottenburg, who is in love with both Wagner and her.”
– Alex Ross

Hear Rita Noel’s performance here.

Florence Price: Three Folk Songs in Counterpoint
Performers: mousai REMIX Quartet

“The reasons for the shocking neglect of Price’s legacy are not hard to find. In a 1943 letter to the conductor Serge Koussevitzky, she introduced herself thus: ‘My dear Dr. Koussevitzky, to begin with I have two handicaps – those of sex and race. I am a woman; and I have some Negro blood in my veins.’ She plainly saw these factors as obstacles to her career, because she then spoke of Koussevitzky ‘knowing the worst.’ Indeed, she had a difficult time making headway in a culture that defined composers as white, male, and dead.”
– Alex Ross

Hear mousai REMIX’s performance here.

Radiohead: Creep and Pyramid Song (arranged by Sergio Carreno)
Performers: Gemini Percussion and Bora Yoon

“Radiohead began at Abingdon School, a private boys’ school outside Oxford. Abingdon has a history dating back to the twelfth century, but it is not a national bastion on the order of Eton or Winchester. Its students tend to come from the Thames Valley region, rather than from all over England, and many rely on scholarships. The members of Radiohead were born into ordinary middle-class families. Thom Yorke’s father was a chemical-equipment supplier; Jonny and Colin’s father served in the army. They were, basically, townies – the kids on the other side of the ancient walls. Even at Abingdon, they felt out of place. The longtime headmaster of the school, Michael St. John Parker, cultivated a pompous manner that many alumni – not just Radiohead – remember less than fondly. Parker described the school spirit in these terms: ‘Competition is promoted, achievement is applauded, and individual dynamism is encouraged.’”
– Alex Ross

Hear Pyramid Song by Radiohead here.

Aaron Copland: Appalachian Spring
Performers: 45^th Parallel Chamber Orchestra

“There is an affecting recording of the elderly Copland leading a rehearsal of Appalachian Spring. When he reaches the end, his reedy, confident Brooklyn voice turns sweet and sentimental: ‘Softer, very sul taso, mysterious, great mood here… That’s my favorite place in the whole piece… organlike. It should have a very special quality, as if you weren’t moving your bows… That sounds too timid. It should sound rounder and more satisfying. Not distant. Quietly present. No diminuendos, like an organ sound. Take it freshly again, like an Amen.’ Copland conjures a perfect American Sunday, like the one at the end of Ives’s Three Places in New England, when the music of all peoples streams from the open doors of a white-steepled church that does not yet exist.”
– Alex Ross

Hear Michigan Chamber Players’ performance here.