It’s always an interesting experience, working with guest conductors.  Especially when you’ve had three weeks with your own music director.  The orchestral habits encouraged by your music director are in full force, and if your MD is a clear conductor with a concise beat (as Carlos has), then adjusting to someone with a much vaguer beat can be a challenge.  In this regard this current classical series week has be especially challenging.  Our guest conductor is pleasant enough, but he’s been somewhat reticent to really put his stamp on the pieces that we’re performing, and there are times when it seems like he’s not really actively involved in the moment-to-moment process of leading the works.  It may be that he’s just in a growth phase where he’s trying to get from being a micro-manager to being more of a hands-off conductor, but this in-between limbo is kind of a terrifying place to be when you’re playing under him.  There have been moments in the Sibelius symphony where you can feel the orchestra’s ensemble sense threatening to break apart, and within the ensemble, particularly among the principal players, the sense of tension is palpable.  How much of this is evident past the footlights remains to be seen.

Peggy Swafford, former violist with the Oregon Symphony and forever a Finn, sent me this poetic review of Sunday night’s performance – enjoy!

My husband and I went out last night
To attend the concert not only alright
But better than best, and to my delight
Sibelius of course was the evening highlight.

Ms. Gomyo was articulate, pretty, not a rooky
In a stunning gown the color of a great chocolate cookie
She treated Prokofiev like she was chased by her bookie
But she was stunning and charming saying “At me, Lookie!

The Wagner was calm reassurance of love
That fit Cosima’s hand like a fine silken glove
The orchestra played softly like the down on a dove
I was moved by the chord progressions – heavenly from above.

Now to my favorite on the program that’s done
The 2nd Symphony has to be called #1.
It recalls of the struggles, then tells of the fun
And talks of the freedom that is eventually won.

This weekend’s set of Classical series concerts at the Oregon Symphony feature the Canadian violinist Karen Gomyo, who I had a chance to hear several times when she was still just on the cusp of a career, most recently when she came to play the Bruch G minor Violin Concerto with the OSO in 2002 under Norman Leyden.  I believe that she also played at the Cascade Festival of Music shortly after she won the Young Concert Artists Auditions – just a week after her 15th birthday – in 1997.  I remember being quite impressed with her then, and though she seems hardly to have aged in the intervening years, she has grown tremendously as an artist.  This week she plays the fiendishly difficult First Violin Concerto of Sergei Prokofiev, which is also one of the most beautiful violin concertos there is. It’s worth noting that Gomyo plays the “Ex Foulis” Stradivarius (1703), which was purchased for her exclusive use by a private sponsor.

In this video, you can see her in rehearsal with Carlos Kalmar’s other main gig, the Grant Park Music Festival in Chicago.  If you look closely when the shot zooms in, you’ll notice our own Principal oboist Martin Hebert playing as acting principal oboe in the Grant Park Orchestra.

The concert also features returning Finnish guest conductor Pietari Inkinen, who last appeared with works of Stravinsky (the violin concerto), En Saga of Sibelius, and a Tchaikovsky work (possibly the 4th Symphony?). The other works on this week’s program are the lovely and delicately-scored Siegfried Idyll of Richard Wagner, and the lush and grand Second Symphony of Sibelius.

We in the little ‘viola nook’ behind stage left at our hall have a running joke about one of our frequent trombone subs, Henry Henniger, who looks a lot like our bass trombonist, Charles Reneau, known as ‘Charley’.  It took some of us a long time to get Henry’s name right, so we just called him ‘Not Charley’ for a while, and it almost stuck (some would say it has).  Not long after this occurred, we realized that violist Brian Quincey fit right into the trombone section made up by Charley and Henry.  Take a look at this photo and see if you don’t agree!

Henry, Brian & Charley

It took Brian a few moments of instruction for him to learn to hold the trombone correctly, as seen below:

Photos courtesy of Robert Taylor.

This YouTube video gives a unique perspective on a recent Bell performance of Lalo’s Symphonie espagnole, which he’ll perform with the Oregon Symphony next season – from the point of view of a seat within the orchestra.  Enjoy.

Wow, I wish I could go out to New York to see this!  What a lineup of great, young quartets to have play the greatest cycle of chamber music ever written: the complete string quartets of Beethoven.  Very jealous! [link]

And as a bonus, the genius of double bassist Daxun Zhang [link] – the best bassist that you’ve never heard of before.  Such amazing musicianship and intonation.  Thank god for YouTube!

On heels of the Percussion Concerto receiving a GRAMMY, and its being programmed on next year’s Oregon Symphony season, I thought it might be nice to get a preview.  Here’s Colin Currie (who will play the piece here in Portland) with the Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra. This appears to be a cadenza with participation from the orchestra’s percussion section.

Saturday evening, the Oregon Symphony unveiled its 2010-2011 season programming.  I was giving the pre-concert talk that night, so I couldn’t be at the unveiling reception, but I suspect that there must have been a fair amount of applause and the sound of jaws hitting the floor as the specifics were announced.  It’s that good.

I believe that this is the strongest, most impressive season in my 15 years with the orchestra – and that includes the season-long celebration of the OSO’s 100th anniversary season in 1995.  There are so many A-list soloists, great repertoire (both new and old, known and unknown), and the promise of many, many great performances from the world-class Oregon Symphony.

Here are the concerts that I most eagerly anticipate, as well as individual works and artists that really piqued my interest.

Sept. 16, 2010 – Joshua Bell plays Lalo
It’s great to have Josh back so soon after his last appearance, and we haven’t had the pleasure of hearing the Lalo Symphonie espagnole since Elmar Oliviera played it under James DePriest quite some time ago.  Word has it that Josh was highly impressed by the OSO the last time he was here, and it must be true if he’s back with us so soon.

Oct. 2 -4, 2010 – Hilary Hahn plays Tchaikovsky
Yes, it’s the Tchaikovsky concerto, but I don’t care.  I’ve been wanting to hear Hahn play live since the moment I first heard her solo Bach recording over 10 years ago.  She’s one of the most probing and honest artists out there today, and she has one of the most formidable techniques seen since Heifetz.  If these concerts don’t sell out, I’ll eat something really disgusting.

Oct. 30 & Nov. 1, 2010 – Bolcom Violin Concerto
The Bolcom is a wonderful piece that I think audiences will love, and I always enjoy playing new concerto repertoire, especially for the violin.  Violinist Benjamin Schmid has just recorded the Korngold Concerto with Seiji Ozawa and the Vienna Philharmonic, and is definitely a hot young violinist on the rise, so that brings even more excitement to the Bolcom.

Nov 20 – 22, 2010 – Stephen Hough and Mahler 10
Stephen Hough can play anything, and I will await it eagerly.  He’s an amazing artist, and such a wonderful gentleman as well.  Then there is Mahler’s 10th Symphony, in the completion by Deryck Cooke.  Violists both love and fear this symphony, as it opens with a long, exposed, and difficult slow section solo.  It’s an amazing piece, and I’m so glad that we’re doing a full version of it rather than just the opening movement (the only one that Mahler completed scoring).

Jan 15-17, 2011 – Emanuel Ax plays Brahms
First: Emanuel Ax.  He’s always been a hero of mine, and I’m so glad to finally be seeing him live for the first time.  Second: Brahms’ Second Piano Concerto – my favorite piano concerto, bar none.

Jan 29 & 31, 2011 – Percussion Spectacular
The amazing Colin Currie returns to play Jennifer Higdon’s GRAMMY-winning Percussion Concerto, along with the amazing Shchedrine adaptation of the Carmen Suite by Georges Bizet for strings and percussion.

Feb 5 – 7, 2011 – Yuja Wang plays Rachmaninoff
Yuja Wang is often mentioned in the same breath as her more famous colleague Lang Lang.  In my opinion she has all the virtuosity of Lang, but combines it with a more subdued stage persona and perhaps a bit more substance.  It will be great to see how their Rachmaninoff traversals compare.  A chance to learn Nielson’s 6th Symphony “Sinfonia semplice” is also exciting.

Feb 20 & 21, 2011 – Jennifer Koh plays Barber
Jennifer Koh has quickly become one of my favorite guest artists, and to have her coming back in one of my favorite violin concertos, the beautiful and rhapsodic concerto by Samuel Barber, is a dream pairing.  Also on the program, a new piece by Resident conductor Gregory Vajda, and my favorite Dvorak Symphony, No. 7.

Feb 26 – 28, 2011 – Lauderdale plays Grieg
Having Thomas Lauderdale back to solo with the orchestra is a treat, of course, but the real story is the guest conductor.  She is Alondra de la Parra, and her name drew some appreciative applause from members of the orchestra who know her from Youth Orchestra of the Americas tours in the past.  She has real buzz right now, and it will be great to see what she’s like.  And it’s great to finally have a woman on the podium, too.

This post has gotten really long, so I’ll just list the remaining highlights that I’m looking forward to:

• Violinist James Ehnes playing Shostakovich’s First Violin Concerto
• Violinist Baiba Skride playing the Khachaturian Violin Concerto
• Cellist Yo-yo Ma playing Shostakovich’s First Cello Concerto
• Martinu’s Sixth Symphony
• Debussy’s La Mer
• John Adams’ The Wound-Dresser, with baritone Sanford Sylvan

It’s going to be a spectacular season, and though I’m enjoying this season quite a bit, next year will be epic.  Hope you’ll get your tickets soon!

Jennifer Higdon’s Percussion Concerto (which will be performed by Colin Currie and the Oregon Symphony next season) has won the Grammy Award for Best Classical Contemporary Composition!  The recording which was nominated and won featured Colin Currie and Marin Alsop with the London Philharmonic Orchestra.  It’s available on the London Philharmonic’s own label.

The orchestra got a copy of the brochure for next year’s concerts, and the season looks extraordinary!  There will be lots of reasons to buy a subscription, including nearly 30 pieces never before played by the Oregon Symphony, a slew of A-list soloists, and some old chestnut favorites, too.  I’ll write a post on my thoughts about the 2010-2011 season on Sunday or Monday.

Tonight we have a very interesting and varied concert (which seems to be the new ‘normal’ under Carlos), that has something for everyone.  The two halves of the concert mirror each other: light –> dark; dark –> light.

The Overture, Waltz and Finale from the opera Powder Her Face, by Thomas Adés begins brightly, almost incandescently, in the height of decadence.  Dance rhythms of all kinds permeate the Overture: foxtrot, tango, Charleston.  The Waltz takes us into darker, more mysterious territory.  Cross rhythms try to knock the waltz off its track, voices enter and exit, both unfinished and unbegun.  The Finale comes straight from the Waltz, with the orchestra shaking itself apart in a flurry of disjointed pizzicati in the strings, and fades away as quietly as the Overture began, loudly.  It is virtuoso composition for the orchestra (expanded from its original chamber opera version for 15 instruments), and an interesting feature is that Adés writes out all of the rubati that one might take if the music were written ’straight’.  Much like John Adams, Adés writes every last dynamic, tempo, and rhythmic subtlety out in detail, but the finished result ends up sounding loose and free, perhaps more so than if he had left these musical options open to the performers.

Ravel’s Piano Concerto for the Left Hand is one of my favorite pieces.  It begins in the depths of the orchestra, featuring one of his favorite instruments, the contra-bassoon, rising from the murky depths of undulating double basses and droning cellos.  This music is almost uniformly dark, with none of the manic gaiety of the G major Concerto, but it is written brilliantly for the instrument – certainly it is true that if you were not looking at the soloist, you would be sure to think that they were using both hands! The piece most definitely shows off Ravel’s great strength: his ability to pace materials and build into tremendous climaxes with the utmost efficiency and subtlety.  It’s a great end to the first half of the concert.

The second half opens with Gustav Holst’s Egdon Heath, a tone poem based loosely upon themes from Thomas Hardy’s Return of the Native, which is largely set within the confines of the fictional location of Egdon Heath.  Described as a vast, desolate moor of sparse habitation, it is an area rife with superstition and tales of witchcraft.  Holst was a good friend of Hardy’s and regarded Egdon Heath as one of his finest works.  It begins, much like the Ravel, in the lowest reaches of the orchestra, the double bass section, in a rare exposed soli passage.  Dark and brooding are the usual appellations given to this piece, and it is largely dark and murky, representing a landscape that, in Hardy’s novel, is anthropomorphized to  reflect the tangled interpersonal relationships of a story which delves into illicit sexual relationships in the height of Victorian England. Fires burn hot, but are concealed underneath layers of clothing or the dark bogs of the heath’s moors.

The final piece on the program is one of Mozart’s sunniest symphonies, No. 34 in C major.  C major is considered Mozart’s most open and optimistic key signature, and this piece bears out that bit of wisdom.  Nothing but pure energy and joy from beginning to end.

It appears that a long stretch of tense contract negotiations have come to a close without a work stoppage in Seattle.  The Seattle Symphony and Opera players and management reached a tentative agreement Wednesday after several nearly around the clock negotiating sessions.  The players have agreed to each pony up just over $2000 to help jump start the board’s fundraising efforts, amounting to just over $180,000 in contributions.  Read the whole story by clicking the link.[link]

You can also read the statement directly from the players (via SSO violist and committee chair Timothy Hale, pictured) by clicking the link.[link]

And, finally, you can read the management press release by clicking the link.[link]

A suite of three instrumental sections from Thomas Adés’ opera Powder Her Face will be amongst the works performed this coming weekend on the Oregon Symphony’s next classical series of concerts.  Here’s a clip of the Overture, as performed by the Philharmonia Orchestra and Christoph von Dohnanyi.  Enjoy!

Purchase tickets here.

Oh, and if you’re not yet a fan of the Oregon Symphony on Facebook, head on over there and remedy that right away!

This week we’ve been fortunate to have the wonderful violinist Chee-Yun in town (replacing the ailing Arabella Steinbacher) to play the Dvorak Violin Concerto.  She’s playing so well – a great combination of clean playing and grab-you-by-the-throat intensity that’s often lacking in the newer generations of violinists (you often get either clean playing, or passionate playing, but seldom both at the same time).

As the member of a string section, I’m fairly constantly in awe of soloists – either those who play out in front of the orchestra, or who play from within.  There is such an added level of concentration that is demanded when you’ve got the spotlight entirely on you, and often the most exposed passages are also the most treacherous ones.  If you screw up as a principal wind player (or even a non-principal), it’s usually pretty obvious, whereas in a string section you’ve got a bit more cover (unless you totally blow a rest or some other catastrophic failure).  So when I see an assistant principal player like OSO flutist Alicia DiDonato-Paulsen step up and play some really fine solos (especially in the Rossini/Respighi ballet score), I very much have to tip my hat to them – they’re coming out of their comfort zone just to the right of their principal, and having to step up their concentration and game a notch or two.

This stuff is very much on my mind right now, as I find myself struggling through my usual January/February doldrums which usually culminate in a major crisis of my worth as a player (and by extension, as a person).  This week’s concert was made up of three pieces that I’d never played before, two of which I’d never even heard before, and that always causes me to put more pressure on myself to try to learn my parts even more thoroughly that I usually do, and to be hyper-critical of myself when I fall short of my objectives.  So as someone who is working mightily to try to keep my A-game these days, it’s humbling and inspiring to see both a soloist from outside the orchestra, and those from inside the orchestra playing so wonderfully.  It’s too easy to start taking these stellar performers for granted.

Of course, it’s in China.

[link]

If you came to tonight’s Oregon Symphony concert (and given the modest numbers in attendance, you most likely did not), you might have noticed that our principal flutist, David Buck, was not on stage.  (He was capably covered for by assistant principal flutist Alicia DiDonato Paulsen in many solo turns in the Rossini.)  It turns out that David was playing a series of concerts with the Pittsburgh Symphony as a guest principal this weekend.  It’s a tremendous honor, Pittsburgh is one of the big, major orchestras, and like the OSO is also led by an Austrian conductor, Manfred Honeck.

From the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette:

The woodwinds throughout provided nuances that blended well, especially the solos of guest principal flutist David Buch [sic], of the Oregon Symphony.

[link]

From the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

The surprise was the impressive guest principal flute David Buck. He’s principal flute of the Oregon Symphony.

[link]

You may recall a year or so ago I posted an entry about the new Park Block that was being planned at SW Park and Taylor in downtown Portland.  Included in the plan was a small, glass-enclosed restaurant space that had a lessee in place – and they planned to call the restaurant “Viola”.  Being a violist, that caught my eye, and even joked that violists might get a discount at happy hour or something like that.  Well, just days before the owner (owner of the now-defunct Roux, Dwayne Beliakoff) were to take over the space, there was an explosion and fire, and the plans had to be put on hold.  Today, happily, I discovered that there was a contingency plan: a mobile food truck that serves a scaled-down version of the eventual full menu to be available at the bricks-and-mortar location.  I had a great burger and fries, made fresh to order from only the finest local purveyors.  You might check it out next time you’re downtown, they’ll mostly be open at the lunch hour to start, eventually staying open later as different events take place around the park block.

Violist Sam Bergman, of the Minnesota Orchestra (and fellow BBB – Bratsche Blogging Brother) made this arrangement of Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man for a Minnesota Orchestra function.  I kind of like it – it might be something we should do here in Oregon…

I just caught this on a feed that I regularly watch.  It’s an open letter from the lead singer of the band OK Go to the band’s fans explaining why they cannot embed the band’s YouTube videos on their blogs or websites.  It shows how slow the industry (major record labels) is to respond to the changing nature of the online marketplace.  Everyone is looking to recoup their costs, and it’s hard to do when your content is floating around in the wilds of the internet.  It’s an interesting situation, because if you replace the band with Orchestral Association and the label with Musicians Union, you get an idea of why it’s so hard for recordings (either as physical product or as a streamed or downloaded file) to be made in the US these days.  I’m not assigning blame, just pointing out that the rules that worked so well for decades are starting to hurt us more than help us.  I wonder how long it will take for the necessary changes to take place.

To the people of the world, from OK Go:

This week we released a new album, and it’s our best yet. We also released a new video – the second for this record – for a song called This Too Shall Pass, and you can watch it here. We hope you’ll like it and comment on it and pass the link along to your friends and do that wonderful thing that that you do when you’re fond of something, share it. We want you to stick it on your web page, post it on your wall, and embed it everywhere you can think of.

Unfortunately, as of now you can’t embed diddlycrap. And depending on where you are in the world, you might not even be able to watch it.

We’ve been flooded with complaints recently because our YouTube videos can’t be embedded on websites, and in certain countries can’t be seen at all. And we want you to know: we hear you, and we’re sorry. We wish there was something we could do. Believe us, we want you to pass our videos around more than you do, but, crazy as it may seem, it’s now far harder for bands to make videos accessible online than it was four years ago.

See, here’s the deal. The recordings and the videos we make are owned by a record label, EMI. The label fronts the money for us to make recordings – for this album they paid for us to spend a few months with one of the world’s best producers in a converted barn in Amish country wringing our souls and playing tympani and twiddling knobs – and they put up most of the cash that it takes to distribute and promote our albums, including the costs of pressing CDs, advertising, and making videos. We make our videos ourselves, and we keep them dirt cheap, but still, it all adds up, and it adds up to a great deal more than we have in our bank account, which is why we have a record label in the first place.

Fifteen years ago, when the terms of contracts like ours were dreamt up, a major label could record two cats fighting in a bag and three months later they’d have a hit. No more. People of the world, there has been a revolution. You no longer give a shit what major labels want you to listen to (good job, world!), and you no longer spend money actually buying the music you listen to (perhaps not so good job, world). So the money that used to flow through the music business has slowed to a trickle, and every label, large or small, is scrambling to catch every last drop. You can’t blame them; they need new shoes, just like everybody else. And musicians need them to survive so we can use them as banks. Even bands like us who do most of our own promotion still need them to write checks every once in a while.

But where are they gonna find money if no one buys music? One target is radio stations (there’s lots of articles out there. here’s one). And another is our friend The Internutz. As you’ve no doubt noticed, sites like YouTube, MySpace, and Blahzayblahblah.cn run ads on copyrighted content. Back when Young MC’s second album (the one that didn’t have Bust A Move on it) could go Gold without a second thought, labels would’ve considered these sites primarily promotional partners like they did with MTV, but times have changed. The labels are hurting and they need every penny they can find, so they’ve demanded a piece of the action. They got all huffy a couple years ago and threatened all sorts of legal terror and eventually all four majors struck deals with YouTube which pay them tiny, tiny sums of money every time one of their videos gets played. Seems like a fair enough solution, right? YouTube gets to keep the content, and the labels get some income.

The catch: the software that pays out those tiny sums doesn’t pay if a video is embedded. This means our label doesn’t get their hard-won share of the pie if our video is played on your blog, so (surprise, surprise) they won’t let us be on your blog. And, voilá: four years after we posted our first homemade videos to YouTube and they spread across the globe faster than swine flu, making our bassist’s glasses recognizable to 70-year-olds in Wichita and 5-year-olds in Seoul and eventually turning a tidy little profit for EMI, we’re – unbelievably – stuck in the position of arguing with our own label about the merits of having our videos be easily shared. It’s like the world has gone backwards.

Let’s take a wider view for a second. What we’re really talking about here is the shift in the way we think about music. We’re stuck between two worlds: the world of ten years ago, where music was privately owned in discreet little chunks (CDs), and a new one that seems to be emerging, where music is universally publicly accessible. The thing is, only one of these worlds has a (somewhat) stable system in place for funding music and all of its associated nuts-and-bolts logistics, and, even if it were possible, none of us would willingly return to that world. Aside from the smug assholes who ran labels, who’d want a system where a handful of corporate overlords shove crap down our throats? All the same, if music is going to be more than a hobby, someone, literally, has to pay the piper. So we’ve got this ridiculous situation where the machinery of the old system is frantically trying to contort and reshape and rewire itself to run without actually selling music. It’s like a car trying to figure out how to run without gas, or a fish trying to learn to breath air.

So what’s there to do? On the macro level, well, who the hell knows? There are a lot of interesting ideas out there, but this is not the place to get into them. As for our specific roadblock with the video embedding, the obvious solution is for YouTube to work out its software so it allow labels to monetize their videos, wherever on the Internet or the globe they’re being accessed. That’ll surely happen before too long because there’s plenty of money to be made, but it’s more complicated than it looks at first glance. Advertisers aren’t too keen on paying for ads when they don’t know where the ads will appear (“Dear users of FoxxxyPregnantMILFS.com, try Gerber’s new low-lactose formula!”), so there are a lot of hurdles to get over.

In the meantime, the only thing OK Go can do is to upload our videos to sites that allow for embedding, like MySpace and Vimeo. We do that already, but it stings a little. Not only does it cannibalize our own numbers (it tends to do our business more good to get 40 million hits on one site than 1 million hits on 40 sites), but, as you can imagine, we feel a lot of allegiance to the fine people at YouTube. They’ve been good to us, and what they want is what we want: lots of people to see our videos. When push comes to shove, however, we like our fans more, which is why you can take the code at the bottom of this email and embed the “This Too Shall Pass” video all over the Internet.

With or without this embedding problem, we’ll never get 50 zillion views on a YouTube video again. That moment – the dawn of internet video – is gone. The internet isn’t as anarchic as it was then. Now there are Madison Avenue firms that specialize in “viral marketing” and the success of our videos is now taught in business school. But here’s a secret: zillions of hits was never the point. We’re a rock band, and it’s a great gig. Not just because we get to snort drugs off the Queen of England (we do), but because the only thing we are expected to do is make cool stuff. We chase our craziest ideas for a living, and if sharing those ideas takes 40 websites instead of one, it doesn’t make too big a difference to us.

So, for now, here’s the bottom line: EMI won’t let us let you embed our YouTube videos. It’s a decision that bums us out. We’ve argued with them a lot about it, but we also understand why they’re doing it. They’re aware that their rules make it harder for people to watch and share our videos, but, while our duty is to our music and our fans, theirs is to their shareholders, and they believe they’re doing the right thing.

This is the first local, large-scale benefit for victims of the Hatian earthquake that I know of, organized by local dynamo/musician/blogger/organizer Stephen Marc Beaudoin.  It’s called Songs for Haiti, and it features a who’s who of local Portland’s classical and non-classical musicians.  And it benefits Mercy Corps, which is notable among major charities in that they are committed to staying in Haiti for the foreseeable future in order to get the shattered nation back on its feet.

The list of performers is still evolving, but it already includes Storm Large, Thomas Lauderdale, Janice Scroggins, Jun Iwasaki and Grace Fong-Iwasaki, Cool Nutz, Portland Cello Project, and many more.  Another great thing about this event (held at the Aladdin Theater) is that Ticketmaster is donating their fees from the event to Mercy Corps as well – so this is the one time that you can know that the ticketing charges are going to a good cause!  Bravo to Ticketmaster for this small but gracious gesture.  All of the artists are donating their talents to the evening, and the Aladdin is also donating the use of its facilities for the event.

Even if cannot attend, please consider going to the Mercy Corps website and donating whatever you can afford.

Here’s the complete info for the event:

WHAT: “Songs for Haiti,” a benefit concert for Mercy Corps featuring a diverse line-up of Portland music luminaries.
WHEN/WHERE:
**one performance only**
Thursday, January 21, 2010, 7:30 pm at the Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukie, Portland.
Call 503-234-9694 for more information. Tickets go on sale 10 am Tuesday, January 19
WHO: Featured artists include pianist Thomas Lauderdale (of Pink Martini), hip-hop artist Cool Nutz, Portland Cello Project, Grammy-nominated pianist Janice Scroggins, Oregon Symphony concertmaster Jun Iwasaki, singer-songwriter Holcombe Waller and the legendary Storm Large, among others.
TICKETS: $30, all seats (general admission). Call 503-234-9694 or go to aladdin-theater.com for more information – tickets go on sale 10 am Tuesday, January 19.

From the New York Times:

A one-day strike at the Cleveland Orchestra ended Tuesday morning with a tentative agreement but the issues that led to the dispute point to troubled times for the nation’s elite classical musical ensembles amid the Great Recession.

Orchestra members struck on Monday, the first such work stoppage here in 30 years. Terms of the agreement between the orchestra’s musicians and the board were not immediately released.

Complete story here [link].