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Tickets now on sale Monica Huggett and the Portland Baroque Orchestra perform in Astoria, Corvallis, Eugene, and Lincoln City. Photo: Torsten Kjellstrand Tickets are now on sale for the 2012 Oregon Bach Festival, for a record 30 ticketed concerts in 14 different venues in 7 cities. Anyone can submit an order via the Festival’s online form or mail-order form for tickets to all events, cities, and venues, although first priority goes to current Friends of the Festival at the $100 level or above. It’s a good deal if you order by April 27. You’ll pay only $5 per order handling fee—a big savings from most online ticket purchases. During this priority period, Friends of the Festival receive their exclusive Friends ticket discount, up to 20% off concerts in the “OBF Performance” series of concerts, depending on the number of events purchased.
During the March 21-April 27 time period, orders are held for processing by the Hult Center Bach’s Office, and then returned by mail beginning early May. Review our ticket pages for venue and price options. Download the print order form, which can be returned by mail or fax or delivered in person. Over the Counter on sale May 8 Beginning May 8 tickets can be purchased instantly online, or by mail, phone, or through ticket outlets for events in other cities. Those outlets include TicketMaster, TicketsWest, the UO ticket office, Tower Theatre, and our home base, the Hult Center Bach’s Office. Bach’s music fires OBF’s Power and Passion Helmuth Rilling. Photo: Michael Latz Tickets are now on sale for the 42nd Oregon Bach Festival, June 29-July 15, 2012 in Eugene, Portland, and five other cities. Conductor Helmuth Rilling, superstar violinist Joshua Bell, keyboardist Angela Hewitt, the Portland Baroque Orchestra, and harpsichordist/conductor Matthew Halls explore Bach’s spellbinding Goldberg Variations and his monumental St. Matthew Passion within the theme “The Power and the Passion.” Guest artists include pop orchestra Pink Martini, the Joe Powers Tango Quintet, and piano-playing siblings The 5 Browns. Bach’s towering Passion influences the Festival throughout. In his next-to-final season as artistic director, Rilling will conduct the work as the grand finale in Eugene, and fully explore its structure in four lecture-concerts. Rilling also conducts Joshua Bell and Mendelssohn in the opening concerts June 29-30 in Eugene and Portland, a night of Bach motets and concerti July 11, and guest-conducts the 15th anniversary concert of the Stangeland Family Youth Choral Academy July 8. The St. Matthew lecture concerts will be filmed in high definition as the next major work on the OBF’s innovative digitalbach.com website, produced in association with the Hinkle Charitable Foundation.  Joshua Bell performs in Eugene and Portland June 29-30 Opening weekend performances to be conducted by Rilling June 29 in Eugene and June 30 in Portland will spotlight masterworks by Mendelssohn, the composer who spurred Bach interest with his revival of the St. Matthew Passion in 1829. The program will include the rousing choral spectacle Die Erste Walpurgisnacht, the Italian Symphony, and the composer’s most celebrated contribution to orchestral music, the E Minor Violin Concerto, with Joshua Bell as soloist. Widely hailed as one of the music world’s great performers, and the newly named Music Director of The Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, Bell will take Mendelssohn one daring step further by performing his own cadenza—the work’s climactic extended solo. More than two hundred years after the St. Matthew Passion, British composer Michael Tippett translated its structure and emotional impact into the modern classic A Child of Our Time. Moved by events preceding the Nazi Kristallnacht attacks, Tippett focused his work on the story of a young man’s attempt to seek justice. Tippett integrated American spirituals in place of the Passion’s chorales, creating a musical work with a universall appeal and deeply dramatic effect. British conductor Matthew Halls, who succeeds Rilling as the Festival’s artistic director after the 2013 season, will conduct A Child of our Time July 6-7 in Portland Eugene. Halls will open the concert with Bach’s celebratory G major Lutheran Mass. An acclaimed keyboardist as a soloist and with his own London-based Retrospect Ensemble, Halls will also perform as soloist July 9 in an all-Bach chamber concert. Bach’s Goldberg Variations is the other thread to weave through the fabric of the 2012 Festival, in a year that marks major birth and death anniversaries of Glenn Gould, the enigmatic genius closely associated with the work:
John Evans, OBF executive director, characterized the Festival as one that illuminates the power of connections. “With Helmuth conducting the St. Matthew, and Matthew Halls both performing and conducting Bach, audiences will experience the strong present and bright future of the Festival,” he said. “But foremost is the opportunity to see and hear the many ways—through concerts, film, lectures, talks, and digital media—that Bach’s music permeates and enriches our cultural life.” Beyond Bach, the festive side of the 2012 OBF schedule includes:
Advance tickets are now on sale via the OBF’s online order form with priority given to contributing Friends of the Festival. Full over-the-counter and charge-by-phone sales at all venues and ticket outlets begins May 8. Pink Martini to take Cuthbert by Storm Storm Large. Photo: Jennie Baker, Photo Mandala OBF’s first-ever concert at the beautiful Cuthbert Amphitheatre Sunday, July 1 features one of our state’s great natural resources: Pink Martini! And another first: making her Eugene debut with the band is lead singer Storm Large. Storm Large fills in for China Forbes, who’s taking this tour off to spend some summer with her little one. Storm’s been busy too: her new book Crazy Enough was an Oprah book of the week, she starred in Randy Newman’s Harps and Angels at the Mark Taper Forum in LA, and will travel to Carnegie Hall performing Kurt Weill’s “Seven Deadly Sins” with the Oregon Symphony. In 2002 she moved to Portland, and with her band The Balls went from wild club act to cult status. In 2006 she was tapped to appear on CBS’ reality show Rockstar: Supernova – a three-month TV blitz that gained her worldwide fame – and in late 2006 her single “Ladylike” debuted at No. 5 on the hot singles chart in Billboard magazine. And, in case you’re wondering, that’s her real name. Audio: Raphael Merlin of Ebène
In the first part, Raphael explains about how the group was formed and how the member’s interests led to the acclaimed CD Fiction. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. In part two, Raphael talks about this Sunday’s concert and the progression from one of Mozart’s Haydn Quartets, and makes a “trip” between the classical Vienna of Schubert and the golden age of St. Petersburg in Tchaikovsky’s “Accordion” quartet. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. In the conclusion of the interview Raphael points the way towards a new quartet project based on the concept of water as the purest component of life. Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. High rising French quartet arrives in BeallNamed one of the “hottest chamber groups in the world” by NPR Music, the Ebène Quartet has won accolades from the Wall Street Journal to Gramophone magazine for their artistry and talent. And while the players are equally at home with Miles Davis and Springsteen as they are with the classic quartet repertoire, Mozart, Schubert and Tchaikovsky are on the program when the Ebène Quartet concludes the ChamberMusic@Beall season Sunday March 4 at 5 pm (note a later start than usual). Their latest CD, FICTION, made NPR’s 2011 list of the Top 10 Classical releases and the Top 50 of any CD. Hailed as “one of the standout quartets of a new generation” by The New York Times, the quartet has been honored as BBC Music Magazine’s 2009 Newcomer of the Year, was admitted to the esteemed BBC New Generation Artists Scheme, and was awarded the First Prize of the prestigious ARD Competition in Munich. The quartet won “Recording of the Year” at the 2009 Classic FM Gramophone Awards for their CD of Debussy, Ravel, and Fauré string quartets, only the fourth time that a chamber ensemble has won this prestigious prize. While the FICTION disc really swings with a 16 pop and jazz tracks, featuring such female stars as Natalie Dessay and Spanish pop star Luz Casal, their Beall program proves their ability to breath fresh live into classics – check out the video above. For tickets, click online or call the Hult Center ticket office, 541-682-5000.
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Cellist Raphael Merlin of the Ebène Quartet (second from left) was Caitriona Bolster’s guest on the Wednesday, Feb 29 Artsline interview program on KWAX. Merlin and his colleagues perform this 