Chamber music inspiring 30,000 people in Portland

The opening of CMNW’s 49^th annual Summer Festival will coincide with our first-ever international Clarinet Celebration, to be held at Portland State University, June 24-July 2, 2019. The festival will draw approximately 100 participants: professional, student and amateur clarinetists for masterclasses, lectures, recitals, evening concerts and instrument demonstrations. CMNW will draw from the world-class clarinetists as artists in the Summer Festival, including Ricardo Morales, Anthony McGill, Richard Hawkins, Corrado Giuffredi, Chad Burrow, Dan Gilbert, Romie de Guise-Langlois, Seunglee Lee, and our own artistic director, David Shifrin. Featured clarinet works to be performed include Steve Reich: NY Counterpoint, Peter Schickele: Monochrome for nine clarinets, and a new work to be commissioned for clarinet ensemble from our CMNW Protégé composer, Daniel Temken.

The summer festival will feature approximately 25 new works, including six commissions. We will bring many of the composers to Portland to participate in free lectures, masterclasses, coachings, open rehearsals, composer conversations, interviews and broadcasts to help our community learn and their creative process and music.

The world premiere commissions include:

• Edgar Meyer and son George Meyer: duet for double bass and violin (to be performed by the composers)
• Caroline Shaw: Three Essays for string quartet, written for and performed by the Calidore Quartet
• David Schiff: new concerto for clarinet and chamber ensemble, to feature David Shifrin as soloist.
• Daniel Schlosberg: creating a chamber version of Mozart’s Don Giovanni, scored for four singers, clarinet and string quartet, to be performed by Heartbeat Opera.
• Michele Mangani:Concertante Variations on themes by Mozart (featuring clarinet)
• Daniel Temken (Protégé Project Composer): new work for clarinet orchestra

Central to the Festival will be approximately 40 educational, community engagement, and audience engagement activities including:

• Education and Community visits by musicians to student music camps, community centers, and youth service programs.
• Free Family Concert and Instrument Petting Zoo: children get hands-on experience making sounds on musical instruments, then enjoy an age-appropriate program (performed by Edgar Meyer and his family), followed by a picnic.
• Free Community Concertsat Portland Art Museum and Parklane Church in East Portland
• Masterclasses: Artists offer masterclasses and coaching for young musicians, offered free to participants and observers
• Musical Conversations: Pre-concert talks by Festival artists and composers, discussing the program to be performed
• Open Rehearsals: Behind-the-scenes look at the process of creating music
• New@Noon: an informal concert series that allows audiences to hear from composers and artists performing works by living composers.
• Conversations with the Composer: Audience members talk with the composers of the works performed at the New@Noon concert.
• Broadcasts on All Classical 89.9 FM, reaching up to an additional 73,000 listeners throughout Oregon and Southwest Washington with our recorded performances, artist interviews, previews, and live in-studio concerts.

In addition to the nationally-acclaimed artists in our Summer Festival, CMNW will also continue its extremely successful Protégé Project for exceptional rising-star musicians. The Protégé Artists’ summer-long professional residency includes mentorship from our festival artists, extensive performance with them in mainstage and their own concerts, and in turn, coaching young students at local music education programs.

Two CMNW programs are designed to encourage young composers: A Composition Competition for regional college students (who receive mentoring from visiting composers whose works are performed during the Festival). We have selected Daniel Temkin as our Protégé composer this summer. He will have the opportunity to participate in the performance of his/her work by our professional festival artists; receive coaching and mentoring from the visiting composers whose work is featured during our summer festival; he then will coach students at local music camps, and participate in diverse venues and outreach activities around Portland. 

Our 2019 Summer Festival continues last year’s theme of celebrating the diversity of chamber music: diversity of cultures, styles, periods and instruments. Opening with the wealth of repertoire for clarinet during the first two weeks, the third week explodes with a contemporary arrangement of Mozart’s Don Giovanni—but arranged for just four singers and a small instrumental ensemble, and ; the Miró Quartet will present their first two concerts of the complete Beethoven string quartets (the complete cycle will be performed over the 2019-20 season). Weeks four and five include Darrell Grant’s jazzy work, The Territory; and a program of music written by composers best known for their film scores, which will be narrated by Edmund Stone, host of “The Score” on All Classical radio. The final week features some of Portland’s favorite artists: bassist Edgar Meyer (this time with his family in concert), pianist Jeffrey Kahane, the Dover Quartet, cellist Fred Sherry and violist Paul Neubauer, playing repertoire ranging from J.S. Bach to Mason Bates.

You make these incredible programs possible. Thank you so much for your partnership and investment in Chamber Music Northwest!

Links:

• CMNW International Clarinet Celebration & Competition
• Check out the entire Summer Festival on our website

• 2019 Summer Festival (PDF)
  

The year 2020 marks the 50^th anniversary since Chamber Music Northwest was founded. It is also the 40^th and final year of leadership under our esteemed Artistic Director, clarinetist David Shifrin. Shifrin is excited about his last two seasons, as he is realizing programs that have long been on his “bucket list”. Summer Festival 2019 opens with the first-ever International Clarinet Celebration and Competition—a week dedicated to workshops, recitals, instrument demonstrations, commissions, and concerts featuring David’s favorite instrument. David has built the reputation of Chamber Music Northwest through his expansive, innovative and dynamic chamber music programming. We feature chamber music that includes not only the beloved classical works, but also branches out into diverse cultural styles including jazz, tango, folk music and even rock and roll. He continues to champion living artists, both through a robust commissioning program and through the Protégé Project, which has launched the careers of many rising stars in the chamber music world.

Tough shoes to fill! CMNW conducted an extensive international search for David Shifrin’s successor, and in January, announced the husband-wife team of Gloria Chien, piano, and Soovin Kim, violin, to assume the duties of artistic director beginning in October 2020. Chien and Kim are already busy planning the 2020-21 season, and although their position doesn’t officially start for many months, they are spending a great deal of time in Portland, getting to know our community. Gloria and Soovin are co-artistic directors of the Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, founded by Soovin in 2008. Gloria is also artistic director of the String Theory chamber music series in Chattanooga, T, which she founded in 2009, and has been director of the Chamber Music Institute of the Music@Menlo Festival since 2010. They live in Boston, where Soovin teaches at New England Conservatory.

Gloria and Soovin are making multiple visits to Portland over the next several months, in order to get to know our community. While in town, they have been busy nearly every moment, meeting chamber music supporters, getting to know the CMNW staff and board, and sharing their passion for music education by participating in CMNW’s extensive education and community engagement programs. This month, they worked with BRAVO youth orchestra, Portland’s El Sistema-based program, as well as meeting with CMNW’s education committee to discuss future directions of the program. And they’ll be performing in both the 2019 and 2020 summer festivals as festival artists.

Your support, through GlobalGiving, has helped us build a vibrant organization that is respected worldwide, and certainly drew an impressive number of outstanding candidates for our artistic director search. We feel very lucky to have secured Gloria and Soovin, and almost equally sad that after so many years, to have dropped those programs.

Thank you for your gifts, which are making great music accessible to all!

Links:

• Gloria Chien and Soovin Kim named Artistic Director desinates