Wordless Music, a group that promotes cross-pollination amongst popular and classical music genres (to put it rather grotesquely) is presenting two concerts in Portland this week, on Thursday (tonight) the 17th and Friday the 18th of April, with the Friday concert featuring the Portland contemporary music ensemble Third Angle.
Here is what they are about, in their own words:
The Wordless Music Series is devoted to the idea that the sound worlds of classical and contemporary instrumental music – in genres such as indie rock, free jazz, and electronic music – share more in common than conventional thinking might suggest. To illustrate the continuity between these worlds, the series will pair rock and electronic musicians in an intimate concert setting with more traditionally understood classical and chamber music performers. In so doing, the series will bring together audiences and introduce listeners of both classical and contemporary music to composers they might not otherwise encounter, for a completely new concert experience.
Sounds interesting, doesn’t it?
Here are the particulars, lifted from their press release:
On Thursday, April 17, Stars of the Lid will perform with a string quartet and projections, on a program opened by electronic composer and Ghostly recording artist Christopher Willits. Also appearing will be members of Portland’s Classical Revolution PDX, to perform Shostakovich’s String Quartet No. 8 in C minor and Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel for piano and viola.
The two-day kickoff event continues on Friday, April 18, at the Old Church, where Portland native and Wordless Music favorite Eluvium will make his second appearance for the series, on a program with local new-music ensemble Third Angle, which will perform chamber music by Chen Yi, Zoltan Kodály, and Portland composers Tomas Svoboda and David Schiff. Tickets to both inaugural Portland Wordless Music events can be purchased at brownpapertickets.com and local Jackpot Records stores.
One reply on “wordless music in pdx”
These shows were a very laudable and worthwhile enterprise, and for a project that has received glowing reviews from the New York Times and the New Yorker (among others) to select Portland as only the second city to host a Wordless Music concert outside of NYC (the first was Minneapolis), I think this speaks volumes about the quality of our arts scene here in P-town.
I published a lengthy series of interviews, previews and reviews as http://www.northwestreverb.blogspot.com if anyone would like more detailed information on Wordless Music.