Wow… what a year it’s been.

In our first real return to live concerts post-pandemic, we accomplished a lot:

• Partnerships with All Classical Portland and Straub Collaborative.
• Artistic collaborations with Cappella Romana, Vijay Gupta, Darrell Grant, Bora Yoon, Kenji Bunch, and Timothy Hagen.
• Raised money for Ukrainian refugee relief, the Uvalde victims fund, Stone Soup, and the Oregon Coalition Against Domestic and Sexual Violence.
• Brought the story and music of Julius Eastman to PDX audiences for the first time.
• Finished the year (and every year since our founding) in the black, thanks to the generous support of our fans and audience!

Next season continues this roll that we’re on, with the kind of creative projects that our audiences have come to expect from us:

• Listen to This: An Evening with Alex Ross and 45^th Parallel – This concert features the best-selling and award-winning author Alex Ross reading from his books and essays on classical music, with 45^th Parallel performers playing the music he references.
• Czech Please – Founder Greg Ewer brings his passion for Czech classical music to the stage with his program of Fibich, Dvořák, and Martinů.
• Garden Concerts – Four concerts in four splendid PDX gardens, a lovely way to spend late summer evenings!
• Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite – Our North Pole Cello Sextet returns for this holiday tradition, this time with Duke Ellington’s jazzy arrangement of Tchaikovsky’s iconic suite.
• Teresa and Florence – mousai REMIX returns with a program of music by two pioneering female composers, Teresa Carreno and Florence Price.
• Lost in Deep Time – Pyxis Quartet partners with visual artist Brad Johnson to create a mind-blowing multi-disciplinary event, combining project images of Oregon geologic landmarks with the brilliant music of Oregon composer Andy Akiho.

One more list…

We are dialing in our operations to best serve our community, with a few important changes for this upcoming season:

• Monthly concerts – We’ll be presenting one show a month (with the exception of December, with the addition of Ellington’s Nutcracker).
• Straub Collaborative – After the success of Femenine this past spring, we’re thrilled to be returning to Straub Collaborative for next year’s March and April concerts. Lost in Deep Time and Gemini Percussion’s Pillars and Threads are perfect shows for this totally cool space, and we are grateful to have Straub as a venue sponsor for those shows!
• Special offers – In order to provide greater access to our concerts, we’re offering discounted tickets to military members and their families, and will be participating in the Regional Arts and Culture Council’s Arts for All program.
• Sound Investment – We’re also very proud to be working with arts activist Crystal Meneses to build relationships with social service organizations that are providing critical care to those in our community that are most in need. This is something we’ve been working towards for a long time, and represents a core value of 45^th Parallel.

And one last thing…

I’ll be moving on from my role as Executive Director of 45^th Parallel next fall, and thus we’re announcing the search for a new leader of the organization. I can’t tell you enough how grateful I am to the wonderful people who’ve helped us reach this point, after a dizzying period of growth that has been remarkable and gratifying.

There are two people that I have to thank, without whom our success wouldn’t have been possible. My wife, Ann, has been a rock of support and sage council. And my friend Danny Rosenberg is just too amazing for words. Our time producing 54 online concerts during the pandemic year is something I will cherish for the rest of my life. We actually raised over $70,000 for musicians who’d been laid off from their orchestra jobs. Yeah, we’re pretty proud of that.

Our board of directors, musicians, and especially our audiences and patrons, have been an honor to work with, and I look forward to having the time to work on special projects that have always been where my creative heart lives.

Thank you all so very, very much.

Ron Blessinger
Violinist & Executive Director, 45^th Parallel Universe