Spring might finally have sprung–the reason we know? The Armory is busting out all over. Doubt is off and running with fantastic critical and popular kapow! ; The Little Dog Laughed is putting the pop back in paparazzi ; The Vera Katz Park had an amazing dedication and community celebration;and as June hits, we’re full-up with all manner of live art and conversation. So what’s up this week?

Luba Zarembinska/Bruno Schulz Panel
Monday, June 2, 7 pm
On the Mezzanine, The Gerding Theater at the Armory
Tonight we co-present (along with our friends from Hand2Mouth Theatre) a panel discussion with Luba Zarembinska, the Artistic Director of Poland’s Teatr Stacja Szamocin. She’ll be joined by several local theater and literary artists to look at Polish literary legend Bruno Schulz’s history and artistry, and Zarembinska’s transformative approach in bringing Schulz’s mesmerizing, idea-rich stories to the stage (in the H2M/Szamocin coproduction of From a Dream to a Dream running through June 8 at Artist Repertory Theatre’s Morrison Theater).

In Residence: NW Professional Dance Project
Monday, June 2-Friday, June 13, Open Rehearsals daily (times vary)
Rehearsal Hall
Throughout the next two weeks the NW Professional Dance Project takes up residence in our Rehearsal Hall pairing a handful of lucky professional and pre-professional dancers ages 16 to 25 with leading dance makers. While at PCS they’ll be working with a slew of guest choreographers–a who’s who of NW dance as we know it–Gregg Bielemeier,Lane Hunter, Mary Oslund, Jonathan Sadony, Sarah Slipper and the estimable James Canfield. Rehearsals are open to the public.

Now in its fifth year, the NWPDP gives rising dancers real-world experience, allowing them close-up face-time in direct collaboration with world-class directors, choreographers, mentors and luminaries like Thaddeus Davis (of Donald Byrd/The Group fame), from Chicago’s Hubbard Street Dance Lucas Crandall and Alejandro Cerrudo, Spanish wunderkind Cayetano Soto, Canadian-born, NY-based Aszure Barton, Barishnikov protegee and rising talent and our own golden son, Jamey Hampton of BodyVox, among others.

A short aside: while he won’t be here at PCS, but keep your eyes peeled around town in July/August for legendary African-American dancemaker Donald McKayle. For more than 50 years his vibrant work (e.g. his 1951 “Games” and 1959’s “Rainbow ‘Round My Shoulder,” fer instance) has been breaking ground. A generous artist and visionary, McKayle authored the permission slip for subsequent generations–with a bold embracing of social protest, raw searing, poetry and a masterful blend of folk form and Graham-Primus-Cunningham modernist movement. He’s a true national arts treasure.

Greenbag Lecture
Setting the stage: Stormwater & Green practice in the Vera Katz Park
Thursday, June 5, 12 – 1 pm
Vera Katz Park
Event is free and open to the public
Join Josh Lighthipe (KPFF Consulting Engineers), Creon Thorne (Portland Center Stage), Mike O’Brien (Portland Office of Sustainable Development) for a lively noontime talk focusing on stormwater conservation, Green building, and public space—from engineering, project management and overall green building perspectives—outdoors in the recently dedicated Vera Katz Park (north façade of the Gerding Theater at the Armory running along NW Davis Street between 10th and 11th Avenues). Cosponsored with AIA/COTE (Committee on the Environment)

First Thursday: Nick Jaina
Main Lobby, Gerding Theater at the Armory
6-7:15 pm
Free to the public
This Thursday, Nick Jaina, one of the keystones of Portland’s indie-pop scene alongside folks like Laura Gibson, Loch Lomond, and Menomena,performs his evocative music that OPB says is “full of the kinds of songs that sound as if they could have been written in any one of the past several decades, as comfortable next to Cole Porter as they are Tom Waits or (to a lesser degree) the Black Heart Procession.”

Visual Art spotlight: Bullseye Gallery presents the exuberant chromaticism of glass artist Ted Sawyer; and recent paintings by Michael Schultheis from the Charles Froelick Gallery throughout the Mezzanine, Lower Gallery and Studio Lobbies.

Ali Ippolito (of Heroes and Villians, Nick Jaina fame) writes music with a haunting poetry and quiet authority that simultaneously tugs, pulls, coaxes, vexes, and inspires. A mezmerizing singer, Ippolito accompanies herself on piano, accordion, and the curious banjolele, giving us fading, sepia-tinged sonic postcards of love and loss.

Her simmering music–as captivating as Tom Waits’ universe of tattooed,angel-headed sinners and hipster saints, Carlos Gardel’s tango-longing or Edith Piaf’s fragile lyric ache– to paraphrase the poet Mina Loy, “infects us with unendurable ease/touching nerve-terminals.” That’s a good thing.

The Good News from on High is that you can hear Ms. Ippolito for the low-low-cost of FREE in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory on First Thursday, May 1, 6-7:15 pm.

Held Over: A mini-expo of iconic paintings by award-winning Northwest artist Michael Brophy, presented in conjunction with the extension of our run-away hit Sometimes A Great Notion.

“A painter of anti-heroic subject matter on a heroic scale, wittily and effectively chronicling the fate of our environment.”
—Art in America

Coming mid-May: Bullseye Gallery presents the exuberant chromaticism of glass artist Ted Sawyer; and selections from the Charles Froelick Gallery.

TS Eliot once said that April was the cruelest month, but that was probably because he never got to participate in a free legal workshop for scribble-centric modernists and other creatives…who knows, perhaps The Wasteland might’ve been populated with a few more hopeful Frostian roads less traveled.

Ever had a big idea swept away from you by a nemesis, wished you’d copyrighted that recording, negotiated for digital rights on your tell-all, or wondered what-the-heck’s a 501(c)(3)?!

Then join us for high tea on the legal high seas on Thursday, April 3 for a Community Artist Lab—So Sue Me: Sound Advice from Peter Vaughan Shaver, Esq.—a free, informal, legal workshop geared for actors, performers, artists, band managers, cartoonists/designers, filmmakers, writers, and, yes, even big-time theater directors.

The Community Artist Lab takes place at 4 pm in the Lobby of the Gerding Theater at the Armory. FREE ADMISSION

Peter Vaughan Shaver is Portland-based arts & entertainment attorney with a fully packed bandolero of legal expertise. His firm Sound Advice, LLC is a go-to for a plethora of creative people and businesses of all kinds and he lectures regularly on topics like copyrights, trademarks, music and art law, non-profits, Internet law, licensing, and business creation widely at schools, arts organizations, and for many educational and community groups.

Ebullient, knowledgeable, and savvy, Shaver will tell it plainly: “Protecting yourself as an artist. . ..understanding copyrights and contracts. . .these are the facts of life in the art business.” He’ll take the “YER” out of Lawyer, demystify the arcane “Legalese” and point artists and creators toward the path of empowerment and sustainability.

An important step for every artist and creative professional is solidifying the nuts-and-bolts business end of showbiz—and that means becoming the master of your fate, the captain of your destiny (plus residuals).

So consider this your one-stop intro to art law, entertainment and music law, intellectual property, nonprofit organizations, publishing and contracts and even–gulp!–wills.

COMMUNITY ARTIST LAB—So Sue Me: Sound Advice from Peter Vaughan Shaver, Esq. takes place just prior to First Thursday, featuring the music of Leviethan Cecil. Coffee, tea, wine, or other tonic for your torpor available at the Armory Café.

The event is free and open to all. Call Tim DuRoche, Community Outreach Coordinator at 503-445-3794 or email timd@pcs.org to RSVP.

photo credit: Tom Oliver

“If the Northwest has its own musical sound, it’s exemplified on Leviethan Cecil’s 2007 release, Monuments in Memory of Nothing So Far. It’s vintage indie-rock made modern. The lyrics have a dreamlike quality, beautiful and deep. Monuments gets a place in my Top 10 CDs of 2007.”
-Amy Atkins, Boise Weekly

Singer-songwriter Leviethan Cecil (of Heroes and Villians, KBOO Midnight Mixtape and DIY, Portland fame) is in the right place at the right time. And if you’re lucky, you will be too: Cecil performs here for FIRST THURSDAY, April 3, 6 pm –no cover and all-ages.

Building a strong following through the noble art of storytelling and song, Cecil’s music brims with evocative melody and emotion, harmony and a certain honesty and earthiness—values that Portlanders have an insatiable yen for.

Not only does he have a hammer, he uses it, hammering in the morning, producing, “the kind of lo-fi bedroom pop the Northwest seems to have perfected,” according to the PTrib’s Barbara Mitchell.

Cecil’s kaleidoscope presents mesmerizing strands of steely independent punk conviction and a lyrical underpinning of elliptical, folk-rock imperative that seems equal parts Elliot Smith, the Minutemen, Neil Young , Skeleton Key and Fugazi, Sandy Bull, Utah Phillips and Syd Barrett. The result: a keening, inspired tonic that both charms and enlightens.

If that weren’t enough, Cecil tells us he’ll be joined by, “Miss Ali Ippolito, wonder-pianist, vocalist, accordionist from Heroes & Villains and her own band.”

Sample This, then plan on stopping by the Gerding Theater at the Armory on First Thursday for the real thing.

“As compelling as anything in recent memory.”
-Casey Jarman, Willamette Week

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buy tickets to Sometimes a Great Notion || read blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion || top of page

Around these parts our mission is inspire the community by “bringing stories to life in unexpected ways” or if you’re prone to anagrammatical games, you might say, “Bigger Notion stirs, an expediency fuels wit.”

All of which is to say, your last week to see Beard/Twelfth Night is nearing, before things take off with Sometimes A Great Notion. To ease the transition from Elizabethan romp to the wooden wilds of Waconda, the spell-binding Per Se performs this First Thursday, March 6 from 6-7 pm for the low-low cost of free in the lobby of the Gerding Theater.

Per Se is the wing-wearing, wisecracking, emotionally-charged musical alter-ego of one, Anne Adams, whom the Willamette Week lauds as a “sweet-voiced angel. . .and one of [Portland’s] greatest unknown pop treasures.”

Per Se’s admirers and critical following is fervent to say the least:

“Per Se happens and something magical enchants the room…you will cry even if you do not feel like it…maybe you will notice you have entered a gingerbread house and it is snowing sparkly snowflake ornaments and oranges are peeled like puzzle pieces…”

And fully justified, I might add. Adams is a gifted singer-songwriter presence who transcends either sides of that hyphenated label, a mesmerizing performer who “brings stories to life in unexpected ways”. . .in other words, a girl after our own heart.

Summing up her theatrical approach for the Daily Vanguard, Adams mused on the fairy tale-like energy she brings to performance:
“Hmm. All little girls like fairies, I think, so to a certain extent it’s my emotional side, my more naive self that I sing from, that wants to indulge that whim. From a more academic perspective, there’s the Shakespearean model of fairies, not only as beings with magical powers, but as emcees of shows, agents of fate and mischievous manipulators of human emotions. So, I guess putting on wings, which I do sometimes, is a statement of intent. Hi, I will be playing the Puck; I’m just messing with y’all. Or I’m Ariel, fixing to whip up a tiny tempest.”

So “call it what you will,” but stop by on First Thursday for an intimate (no cover) early evening with the irresistable Per Se, enjoy a class of wine at the Armory Café, and get lost in the unexpected!

Find out more about our First Thursday events.
Read more from Outreach Director Tim duRoche’s blog.

“A painter of anti-heroic subject matter on a heroic scale, wittily and effectively chronicling the fate of our environment.”
—Art in America

Rehearsals began today for PCS’s production of Ken Kesey’s iconic Oregon novel, Sometimes a Great Notion, adapted and directed by Aaron Posner. Fitting then that, in conjunction with this world premiere staging, we have the opportunity to showcase the equally iconic paintings of Northwest artist Michael Brophy.

Heroic in scale but unsentimental in deployment, Brophy’s work is an ideal visual partner to Kesey’s narrative. Like Kesey’s bold, epic novel, considered by many to be one of the greatest pieces of Oregon literature, Brophy’s work continues an Oregon tradition that looks at landscape, place, and regional character—while posing tough questions about our role as stewards, pioneers, and antagonists of the Northwest horizon.

Summing up the epic quality of that tension, Brophy recounts a drive through Kesey country to the Oregon Coast where he came upon an enormous clear cut: “It looked like World War I. . .It was kind of awesome and sublime. Of course it was destructive, but it was spectacular too.”

An award-winning visual artist, Brophy has exhibited extensively throughout the region. In 2005, he was honored with a retrospective at the Tacoma Art Museum and the Hallie Ford Museum of Art at Willamette University. His work is in a number of collections including Microsoft, the Multnomah County Library Collection, the Portland, Seattle, and Tacoma Art Museums, OSU Library in Corvallis, and the City of Portland and was given a the fifteen-minutes-of pop-fame spotlight as the cover imagery on Sleater-Kinney’s 2005 album “The Woods.”

As Jon Raymond’s noted, the work is, “Melancholic and darkly funny, [forming] a deadpan commentary on the often-indistinct border between nature and civilization.” But rather than a didactic Northwestern Wobbly-spring radicalism, Brophy’s work has a lyric luminescence that suggests Gary Snyder’s Smokey the Bear Sutra: “Wrathful but Calm. Austere but Comic” . . .a sly Buster Keaton-meets-Wendell Berry reminder that:
“The land bears the scars
of minds whose history
was imprinted by no example
of forebearing mind.”

Charles D’Ambrosio astutely captured the protector-pillager dynamic in Brophy’s version of frontier and forest: “Ruin is painted as if it were eternal, as if there were nothing to recover, as if beauty persists, generous and spacious, even when the landscape of our longing does not. His work holds us in place, keeps us motionless, transfixed by an arrangement of harmonies that don’t add up, that offer an artistic calm but no ethical or social way out.”

Never give a inch, indeed!

During March and April, a number of the artist’s paintings (including the 6-x-7-foot painting “Pacific Wonderland,” seen on the poster for the show) will be on view, courtesy of Laura Russo Gallery, on the Mezzanine, lower PGE Gallery and Studio lobby levels of the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

Preview Brophy’s work this First Thursday, Mar. 6, 5:30-7:30 pm. Also featuring live music by Per Se
Read more from Tim duRoche’s blog.

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First Thursday || buy tickets to Sometimes a Great Notion || read blogs about Sometimes A Great Notion || more free community events || top of page

Our mission ’round these parts is “bringing stories to life in unexpected ways. . .Theater brings us together, to sit near one another, to hear stories, to lift our voices in song. Theater creates worlds like no others; its immediacy cannot be duplicated; its intensity cannot be matched. A playwright’s miraculous words, directed with insight and acted with passion, elicit laughter, sorrow, astonishment, enlightenment, inspiration. Suddenly, we are not alone.”

Theater in that regard has a close cousin in Pop Music–which at its best shares that galvanizing, emotionally charged power. It’s mysterious and unpredictable, but beautiful when it all lines.

They’re playing our song, where were you when [insert life-changing moment] happened. . . .We are the champions, let it be, it’s all for you body and soul, Come as you are/as you were. . .

That’s why every First Thursday we invite musicians (as independent of spirit as the great playwrights we know and love) to share their stories and songs in this hearth we call the Gerding Theater at the Armory.

February brings us a rock-star. Yes, that’s right, rock-star (albeit in a lower-case, humble way). From Los Angeles, singer-songwriter WISELY .

A performer with seemingly bullet-proof critical raves, Wisely’s beautifully melancholy video featuring Jenna Fischer (of NBC’s The Office) recently brought Wisely to a new wider audience.

Fans of Michael Penn’s raw, reflective snapshots of the human condition (or those of Jason Falkner and Owsley for that matter) will appreciate Wisely’s exceptionally well-crafted songwriting ethic -–brimming with heartfelt immediacy, melody, with a finish that is deliciously hummable. According to Entertainment News, his is music “Like Lennon and McCartney, Ray Davies and others of that ilk, he knows how to weave his way through songs that are straight-ahead, and yet still sensuous and seductive.”

ALSO Visual Art on view on the Gallery and Studio levels, a spectacular array of visual art from Pulliam Deffenbaugh: recent paintings by JAMES BOULTON (Portland/San Francisco) and a fantastic oil, Dura-Lar, enamel wall piece by Ashland-based MATTHEW PICTON; and from Blackfish Gallery: KAREN EHLER’s encaustic paintings and ANGELA PASSALACQUA’s Twelfth Night-inspired oil paintings on wood. (Courtesy Jeffrey Butters and the members of the Portland Art Dealer’s Association)

WHEN: Thursday, February 7, 5:30-7 pm Free admission

WHERE: Lobby, Gerding Theater at the Armory (128 NW Eleventh Avenue, between Couch and Davis)

Every First Thursday in the Pearl, PCS revvs up the sustainable spaces of the Gerding Theater at the Armory with live music, visual art, cocktails and conversation. The art of the city is at the Gerding Theater at the Armory, First Thursdays and everyday.

Wisely’s appearance is sponsored by Magnificent Wine Company offering complimentary House Wine 5:30-6:30 pm, courtesy Precept Branding Company, Seattle

2008 is the year of the cello. Fer real! One of the reasons we love the cello is because its range approximately matches the range of the human voice–it speaks to us. One other reason is that all of a sudden Portland’s favorite indie bands (Holcombe Waller, Bright Red Paper, John Weinland, Loch Lomond, Norfolk and Western, the Ahs, Horse Feathers, Laura Gibson, Musée Mecanique) all have one.

So what better way to kick off the first First Thursday of 2008 than with The Portland Cello Project. Join us on First Thursday, January 3 from 5:30-7 pm—after work or before you hit the streets of the Pearl for gallery-frenzy. You won’t be disappointed.

The PCP is an out-of-the-park splendid group of rotating players (anywhere from four to fifteen at any given time), that features among others Douglas Jenkins, Justin Kagan, Gideon Freudmann, Skip von Kuske, Anna Fritz, Galen Cohen, Kevin Jackson, and more. An evening of PCP can run you through the paces of Beethoven, Bach or Samuel Barber, Argentine tango, Bon Jovi, The Ahs, Salt-N-Pepa (“Push It” never sounded like this!), Villa-Lobos, Loch Lomond, Manuel De Falla or such chamber music hits as Britney Spears’ “Toxic.” Utterly fantastic, musically infectious.

For this early evening performance, expect special guest appearances by two brilliant indie-music figures, the moody and elliptical Nick Jaina and stellar songwriting craftsman John Weinland.

They’ve been called hipsters and referred to as classicists for the people—one thing’s for sure, they’re a beautiful experiment in musical democracy that only Portland could produce.

ALSO Visual Art on view on the Gallery and Studio levels, a spectacular array of visual art from Pulliam Deffenbaugh: recent paintings by JAMES BOULTON (Portland/San Francisco) and a fantastic oil, Dura-Lar, enamel wall piece by Ashland-based MATTHEW PICTON; and from Blackfish Gallery: KAREN EHLER’s encaustic paintings and ANGELA PASSALACQUA’s Twelfth Night-inspired oil paintings on wood.

First Thursdays at the Armory are revving up with surprises and all manner of of auditory and visual splendor.

In February: Music by LA-based songwriter Wisely with Portland’s Per Se.