By Leslie Tuomi | Development Director
After all of Portland’s snow and ice, road closures and stress, what better way to unwind than to come to Chamber Music Northwest’s 2017 Winter Festival and experience the healing power of music?
The Festival opens Thursday, January 26th with the renowned cello/piano duo, David Finckel and Wu Han, playing a program titled, “The Passionate Cello.” The program includes works by Bach, Schumann, Mendelssohn and Chopin. In addition to their international touring artist careers, Finckel and Han are co-artistic directors of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, so are also professional colleagues of Chamber Music Northwest.
Friday’s program brings together an all-star cast of David Finckel and Wu Han, The Miró Quartet and the Montrose Trio in a concert of enchanting Romantic works by Dvorák, Arensky and Mendelssohn.
On Saturday, the Miró Quartet is joined by Martin Beaver and Clive Greensmith of the Montrose Trio to perform an all-Brahms program. Reed College Professor Emerita, Virginia Hancock, will present a pre-concert discussion of Brahms’ music.
The Winter Festival wraps up on Sunday, January 29th with three piano trios by Shostakovich, Beethoven and Brahms, performed by the Montrose Trio.
The four concerts will be exhilarating, but that is only part of what Chamber Music Northwest brings to our community during the Winter Festival. We ensure that our artists are also out in the community as part of our Education and Outreach program. Activities include a studio class for Portland State University violin students; a visit by the Miró Quartet to the budding young musicians of BRAVO Youth Orchestras, an El Sistema-inspired music education program in Portland’s poorest school district; coaching two ensembles from Portland Youth Philharmonic, presenting a live performance and interview on radio as part of All Classical 89.9’s “Thursdays at 3” programs; presenting master classes in cello and piano; and providing free concert tickets for all of the students who participate in CMNW education programs.
The Winter Festival will also highlight our youth orchestra partner, Portland Youth Philharmonic. Ensembles of PYP musicians will be coached by our Festival artists, and then will perform on stage prior to the Thursday and Friday concerts. We are proud of our long association with PYP and happy to provide their talented students this opportunity to work with some of the world’s greatest professional artists.
On Thursday January 26th, CMNW will announce its 2017 Summer Festival—a stunning lineup of artists and programs, with a special emphasis on women composers, both historical and contemporary. Stay tuned to our cmnw.org website to see more about this summer’s innovative programming!
Finally, we want to thank all of our supporters, especially those who gave during our year-end campaign. Chamber Music Northwest is in sound financial state, which allows us to take artistic risks such as commissioning new music and presenting programs that are expensive to produce. In fact, we have run for 37 years without incurring a deficit—something we owe both to our loyal supporters and to our good management. We recently completed our 2016 audit, which demonstrated that 80% of our annual expenses are devoted to artistic programming!
Your support, through Global Giving, helps our organization thrive and bring outstanding artists to Oregon, who spend time with music-lovers of all ages in our community. Thank you for your gifts, which are making great music accessible to all!
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