Meet the dynamos who make Portland's art music snap and crackle

Four who are scene-shifting classical musicians talk about why they came to Portland, and why "a big small town" can be a more promising place than bigger Seattle for an art-music revolution.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

The Greenbank Farm on Whidbey Island is opening an art gallery

The gallery will feature work by Rob Schouten and others.

• Seattle Art Blog

Irwin's installation 'Nine Spaces, Nine Trees' is better at UW, but still lacking

Says reviewer Gary Faigin: "If there’s an overriding weakness to the piece, it comes from the fact that it was conceived for one site, and installed in another. I’m not convinced that the fence idea was a particularly successful response to the original surroundings of Nine Spaces, and I’m even less convinced that it makes a lot of sense on a leafy college campus, where it loses any resonance with its environment that it might have once had."

• ArtDish

Big Bach at Big Ben

Seattle's Benaroya Hall, home of the Seattle Symphony, also contains a fine organ, which is the most prominent visual feature as you look at the stage of Big Ben (as opposed to the recital hall, or Little Ben). This year, the Symphony has promoted a series of three Bach organ recitals on the Watjen Concert Organ, designed by the leading American organ builder, C.B. Fisk. Joseph Adam of St. James Cathedral was the soloist, and last week Dr. Adam concluded the series before a large and rightly enthusiastic audience.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

The city of Vancouver is forcing its Maritime Museum to close, say officials

A dispute over a transition timeline for moving the $14 million collection into a proposed National Maritime Centre is unrealistic, say museum officials. They've also charged the city with endangering the schooner St. Roch, a National Heritage Site. "If the city's intent is to terminate the museum, break up the collection and remove it from public display, it will have to do so by its own hand and not through the [society]," says one official.

• Vancouver Sun

Chicago Symphony nabs Muti as its new music director

Wooing the superstar conductor was a triumph for CSO's president, Deborah Card, who used to hold that job with Seattle Symphony.

• Chicago Tribune

This Is War: An Oregon company scores a surprise hit with soldiers' video

The man behind the National Combat History Archive in Hillsboro oversees a vast and fascinating collection of photos, film, and video from conflicts stretching back to the Spanish-American War. Its latest compilation, a documentary shot by Oregon soldiers, has been making the rounds of film festivals. Says Gary Mortensen: "This isn't a bag of tan plastic Army men that we send over to Iraq. These are real people tied to real communities. And it's important to meet them and get their perspective."

• Oregonian (Portland)

Lawrence Brownlee shines in Seattle Opera's Puritani

A night to cheer Bellini fans: absolutely splendid music, excellent singers, and a chance to see a rising star tenor.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

A retrospective of Paul Taylor Dance at Meany

The program highlights Taylor as a droll observer and as an artist enamored of the relationships between movement and music.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

Writers are back but audiences for their TV shows are not

One reason for the slump: audiences lost interest in series, once the storyline was broken.

• New York Times

Mods versus snobs

Modernist architecture is for the elite, right? Not any more. The movement to preserve modern structures is finding new energy in populist appeal and as a counterbalance to today's McMansions and Viagra villas. The debate over a Ballard Denny's is just one squabble in a growing national discussion about preservation, proportion, and pedigree.

• READ MORE
• 7 Comments

CBC Radio Orchestra is now officially kaput

The Vancouver orchestra, the last radio orchestra in North America, fought to the last, but now it's pronounced dead.

• Times Colonist (Victoria)

Modernizing madly, libraries are still losing their allure

One problem, writes a British critic, is that people have lost the habit of borrowing (and returning) things.

• The Guardian (U.K.)

A quiet revolution online: The digital literary journal

Experimentation is encouraged; the "workshop short story" eschewed. Brevity is the norm, but that doesn't mean quality suffers. Even novels are going online, in increasingly terser and better form.

• Stranger (Seattle)

Architecture's dead-ends are also worth preserving

Lawrence Cheek surveys some of the buildings touted for historic preservation, including those reflecting trends that fizzled out, and makes a case for a small museum of the misguided. Seattle Center, he argues, has quite a few choice examples.

• Seattle Post-Intelligencer

Elton John wants to perform in all 50 states, so he's headed for Alaska

He play concerts in Anchorage and Fairbanks.

• Anchorage Daily News

Discords in the violin sections

The concertmaster post (leader of the first violin section) is proving a hot seat in Seattle. Marjorie Kransberg-Talvi, longtime leader of the Pacific Northwest Ballet Orchestra, has resigned that post, unhappy at criticism of her playing by conductor Stewart Kershaw, effective the end of this season. Ingrid Matthews is taking a one-year leave from being leader of Seattle Baroque Orchestra, citing a need to take some time off. And turmoil continues at the Seattle Symphony.

• READ MORE
• Comment Now

Public Radio, with ratings flat, explores more youth-friendly formats

Pilots like "The Takeaway" will be more interactive, multiculatural, and relevant to a wider swath of people. Despite the big runup of listeners from mid 1990s to 2003, the NPR audiences have been essentially stagnant for the past five years.

• New York Times

Studies find no link between arts education and higher test scores

The causal connection is not there, researchers find, and there's even evidence that test scores go down for students taking more art. Comments the reporter: "If arts education stakes its claim to students’ time and schools’ money on some unproven power to push standardized test scores upward, its position in American schools is bound to be precarious."

• New York Times

In Seattle, smaller theaters are scoring the big scripts

The little theaters are taking up the slack, as the larger houses focus on hatching new plays and elaborate recastings of classics. Hence, a hot Broadway play such as The History Boys, will be going to ArtsWest next season.

• Seattle Times