Contact:
Carl Herko
Vice President, Media & Public Relations
503-416-6347
cherko@orsymphony.org

September 8, 2008

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

AN UNFORGETTABLE OPENING CONCERT SETS THE TONE
FOR THE OREGON SYMPHONY’S NEW SEASON

---

(PORTLAND, Ore.) – One thing’s for sure: Nobody was using the words “same-old, same-old” Friday as the Oregon Symphony kicked off its 2008/09 concert season in Portland’s Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall with a collaboration unlike anything else in its 113-year history.

The Oregon Symphony opened Portland’s nationally known Time-Based Art Festival for the first time by sharing its usual concert-hall stage with the unlikeliest of guest artists – the indie pop sensation Antony and the Johnsons – in a program that had the crowd cheering and critics searching for superlatives.

The concert was the first performance in a six-city, two-continent tour by singer/songwriter Antony Hegarty with his band, Antony and the Johnsons, featuring appearances with prominent orchestras. In the next month the program will be repeated in Milan, Zaragoza (Spain), Los Angeles, New York and London and include collaborations with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra, among others.

Its Portland debut, conducted by Oregon Symphony Resident Conductor Gregory Vajda, was a hit with audience members and music critics alike.

In a review headlined “Yearning for beauty,” the Oregonian’s pop critic, Luciana Lopez, wrote: “This is not Mozart or Beethoven or Bach, though I think those men would have approved. This is soul and torch and classical and cabaret and chamber, elegant and vulnerable.”

Lopez noted how the concert’s music – nearly all original songs by Antony and the Johnsons – sounded even better in new arrangements for orchestra by Hegarty and wunderkind composer Nico Muhly:

“The music has been changed to fit this group, and the change has only increased its power,” Lopez wrote. “The symphony sounds more fluid than we might normally think it. Maybe we think of classical music as a form-based art, with the written note in a place of such importance. But here they are superb, playing music that depends little, if at all, on the restrictions of form for its beauty. Cellists use their instruments for percussion; a guitar weaves in and out; there is great respect for silence and for the void.”

The concert drew the largest audience for any presentation in the six-year history of the cutting-edge TBA Festival, an annual event organized by the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art. PICA Executive Director Victoria Frey said more than 2,400 people attended.

Writing in the gay/lesbian alternative paper Just Out, critic Stephen Marc Beaudoin called the performance an “emotional tour de force,” adding: “The crowd greeted the concert with the most rattling ovation heard at any Portland concert in this writer’s memory.”

Beaudoin picked up on a point important to the orchestra: “Clearly, PICA and the symphony – which was in great form even on unfamiliar ground – saw this concert as a way to reach across the aisle in bipartisan music-making.”

Oregon Symphony Association President Elaine Calder sees the concert as an ideal example of how the orchestra can reach new audiences by thinking outside the box.

“We were very happy when PICA approached us last spring about this collaboration,” Calder said. “This is exactly what we’re trying to do: We want to broaden our programming to better reflect the eclectic tastes of this progressive community. And when we learned we were kicking off Antony’s international tour, so much the better.

“It was great to see the crowd at the Schnitz on Friday night and to work with Antony and his terrific group of musicians.”

Friday’s concert is one of a number of significant programming changes the Oregon Symphony has implemented for its 2008/09 season. Among the differences:

• The traditional Pops series has been placed in the hands of new Principal Pops Conductor Jeff Tyzik and reduced from seven programs to four, with only two performances of each on Saturday evenings and Sunday afternoons.  Audiences have responded favorably, and as a result, the Pops season will open next month with much larger houses at every performance than has been the case in recent years. 

• The range of single-performance events has been greatly expanded with concerts in a variety of musical genres, all accompanied by the orchestra.  This season’s mix includes concerts with jazz singer Dianne Reeves, a big-band program led by Norman Leyden, Portuguese fado artist Mariza and the American bluegrass band Cherryholmes. The season ends with the orchestra sharing the concert-hall stage again with Portland’s own Pink Martini in two live-recording sessions led by Pink Martini’s founder Thomas Lauderdale and Oregon Symphony Music Director Carlos Kalmar.

In addition, the Symphony’s classical season gets under way later this month with an Inside the Score look at Tchaikovsky’s 4th Symphony on Sept. 21 and three performances of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony Sept. 27-29.

Information on the complete range of Oregon Symphony programming this season can be found on the orchestra’s web site, orsymphony.org.