By Leslie Tuomi | Development Director
The 2022-23 Season has opened, and we are excited to share the finest talents in the chamber music world with our own Portland community.
From our opening concert on September 29, CMNW exudes a fresh energy: soloist Anna Lee lit up the stage, demonstrating her mastery of both the contemporary (Moonshot, by Protégé composer Alistair Coleman) and Baroque (performing alongside Artistic Director Soovin Kim in Bach’s double violin concerto). CMNW is proud to showcase our talented Protégé Project artists such as Anna Lee, and this concert reflected the wonderful balance of artists (featuring our young Protégé, our Artistic Director, and the Portland-based Amadeus Chamber Orchestra), repertoire (ranging from Bach to Tchaikovsky to the Coleman piece, composed in 2019.)
Our first two concerts take place in the gorgeous new Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, which just opened in spring 2022—other venues this season will include Portland State University’s Lincoln Hall, The Old Church, and Alberta Rose Theatre. Programs will introduce talents new to Portland, such as the Sphinx Virtuosi Orchestra (October), baritone Will Liverman (December) and our Artists-in-Residence, the Catalyst Quartet (April), as well as bringing back beloved artists such as Alisa Weilerstein, cello (February), David Shifrin, clarinet (March) and the piano trio of Jaime Laredo, violin; Sharon Robinson, cello; and Anna Polonsky, piano (November).
These artists do not simply come to town, play their concert, and leave. They share their talents in so many ways throughout our community, giving master classes, performing benefit concerts for school music programs, working with our students in schools from Hillsboro to Gresham, coaching student ensembles such as Portland Youth Philharmonic, Metropolitan Youth Symphony, BRAVO Youth Orchestras, and Portland Community Music Center. They also play for homeless shelters, hospitals, assisted living communities, and various social service agencies.
Last year, we began a 3-year residency with violinist Rebecca Anderson and pianist Mika Sasaki. They are working with eight area organizations, communicating via “musical postcards” (videos updates about themselves and their programs) and then spent a week in May working with each group in person. In addition to their residency visits, Becky and Mika also performed a free community concert at the First Congregational Church downtown, and a chamber party house concert to help raise funds for our education programs.
The Catalyst Quartet, our 2022-23 Artists-In-Residence, will be in town for extended periods both this spring and summer, working with a variety of student and community groups.
Attendees at our 2022-23 concerts will note the diversity of artists, in terms of ethnicity, age, and geography. It is part of our goal in appealing to a more diverse audience, that those who come to Chamber Music Northwest will see artists on stage that look like them. And for those who cannot attend the concerts in person, we continue to record and produce selected programs as “At-Home” concerts, which anyone with access to the internet can watch, no matter their geographic location or time zone, (even multiple times!), online.
We thank our GlobalGiving donors for helping us share music and education programs with our audiences both here in Oregon and through the internet.
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