In March, Sounds.Like.Portland is peeling a cap back on “serious music” when Classical Revolution PDX takes over for three weeks . CRPDX’s String Quartet features the subversive string talents of Lucia Conrad, violin; Lauren Elledge, violin; Heather Mattie Kaiser, viola; Erin Winemiller, cello.

Classical Revolution PDX were tired (aren’t we all?) of the perception that classical music is the provenance of the high, mighty, fusty and dusty. CRPDX have lent their talents to locals like Rachel Taylor Brown, Sophie Lux, Loch Lomond and Matt Sheehy, and see no contradiction in playing everything from Bach, Bartok and Beethoven to Philip Glass and Queen. If you’re lucky you might even stumble off of Sandy Blvd. and hear them at the Hollywood Theater playing soundtracks to classic films or camp-classics like Plan 9 from Outer Space.

Classical Revolution PDX like any band of world-changing agitators has a Manifesto and they’re not afraid to whip it out:

WE LOVE CLASSICAL MUSIC—the manifesto

We love classical music. 

We love playing classical music. 

We love listening to classical music. 

We are tired of the elitist and inaccessible nature of the classical world. 

We believe that there are many that would enjoy classical music if they could access it in a setting that is comfortable for them. 

We believe classical musicians should be allowed to perform in a setting that is more casual – where the audience is allowed to have a drink, eat a scone, laugh a little, and clap a lot. 

We believe everyone can enjoy the music that we love.

Join us Saturdays March 6, 20, 27 from 5-7 pm in the Lobby for a return to the basics—rich, sonorous music…the peoples’ music, back where it belongs —free for the taking!

“Have you ever noticed that whenever you hear live classical music, you’re wearing uncomfortable clothes, you’re in a concert hall or a church, and it costs money? Classical Revolution PDX noticed that too, and they’re doing something about it.”
— John Minervini, Willamette Week

Cosponsored by Music Millennium

PCS’s Community Programs made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation.

This past Sunday afternoon we noticed that a group of ladies on The Receptionist audience were wearing name tags with the name Bev on them. Well, it was The Beverlys. When a group of friends, all named Beverly, heard that the title character in The Receptionist is named Beverly, they bought a block of tickets and had a fun field trip.

Thanks for coming to the theater Ladies!

Posted by Joel Gunz
alfredhitchcockgeek.com

Holden Caulfield, the hyper-intelligent, distressed hero of Catcher in the Rye, hated movies. He did, however, make an exception for my favorite director. Here’s what he said about trips he took with Phoebe, his 10-year-old kid sister, to see her favorite movie, The 39 Steps:

“She knows the whole goddam movie by heart, because I’ve taken her to see it about ten times. When old [Robert] Donat comes up to this Scotch farmhouse, for instance, when he’s running away from the cops and all, Phoebe’ll say right out loud in the movie — right when the Scotch guy in the picture says it — “Can you eat the herring?” She knows all the talk by heart. And when this professor in the picture, that’s really a German spy, sticks up his little finger with part of the middle joint missing, to show Robert Donat, old Phoebe beats him to it — she holds up her little finger at me in the dark, right in front of my face. She’s all right. You’d like her.”

New Yorker writer Lillian Ross recently reminisced about a letter she received from him about a trip he took to London with his children. He took them to see Engleburt Humperdink in the stage production of Robinson Crusoe. “Awful,” he wrote, “but we all sort of enjoyed it, and the main idea was to see the Palladium itself, because that’s where the last scene of The 39 Steps was set.”

When Salinger died last month, I, like every other male born in the second half of the 20th century, was saddened, the loss made all the more poignant because he was like a friend I hadn’t seen in many years.

Unlike Holden, old Salinger loved movies and had a decent collection of 16 mm films, the kind they used to use in school. I have a fantasy about meeting him. But instead of sitting down for an earnest conversation about writing, or Seymour, or Franny, I’d rather drop by his place and cook a batch of stovetop popcorn. Jerry would be in the living room threading The 39 Steps through his rackety projecter. Then we’d pull the shades, grab a spot on the couch, and bring Mr. Memory back to life. I can’t think of a much better way to kill an afternoon. Am I right, sir?

Sounds. Like. Portland:
Jim Brunberg with special guest Jonathan Newsome—and Matt Schulte!!

Jim rounds out his month-long stay  at PCS with a double-shot evening.  Opening for Jim this evening will be engaging singer-songwriter Matt Schulte, a performer with a captivating, otherworldly voice —followed by a set with Jim and  Miraflores’ Jonathan Newsome.

If you haven’t experienced the warmth and ebullience of Brunberg’s musicality and utter nonchalance, then you have two more Saturdays to get with the program.  Give him a bass, a banjo, a guitar, or a cardboard box and a couple of straws and he’ll coax you into the time of your life. It may be past Valentine’s Day, but ask him for a version of Burke and Van Heusen’sPolka Dots and Moonbeams. . .you can even dance if you like—we like that kind of surprise happening around the Armory.

Jim Brunberg (a Portland-based singer/songwriter and multi-instrumentalist who hails from Coralville, Iowa) honed his rich talent in the coffee houses and taverns of San Francisco. Jim loves “heckling from the crowd, broken strings, and dressing rooms without ventilation.”  PCS regulars will recognize him as the guy with the bass  who sang with Storm Large during last summer’s hit, Crazy Enough.   A vital member of the Portland music community, Brunberg istechnical director for LiveWire Radio and the man behind Mississippi Studios .   A master craftsman of a songwriter, Brunberg is a musical charmer with a warm voice, an irreverent wit and versatile musical chops.  Don’t just ask me, ask some of the folks he’s toured with over the years, strummers, pickers, thumpers and shouters as diverse as Greg Brown, Tracy Grammer, Hot Tuna, Willie Nelson, The Indigo Girls, Huey Lewis, and Rat Dog.

Saturdays in February from 5-7 pm, Lobby (Gerding Theater)

Cosponsored by Music Millennium

PCS’s Community Programs made possible in part by grants from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and James F. & Marion L. Miller Foundation.

This Friday, February 26, we wrap-up our  month-long series of weekly noon-time performances with Third Angle New Music Ensemble .  Today, buckle in for a moveable feast of dance, sound, music featuring choreographer-dance artist Linda Austin (cofounder of Performance Works NW)  and improviser-sound artist JP Jenkins (longtime vital member of Portland’s creative music scene).

For these free performances, 3A and PCS invited a bevy of artists to interpret and respond to Mark Applebaum’s dazzling, epic graphic score “The Metaphysics of Notation” –currently installed on the Mezzanine–animating the public spaces of the Gerding Theater’s lobby with all manner of sound, sight and movement. Applebaum’s score, a stunning, 72-foot-long work of visual art teeming with fantastical musical glyphs where the meaning is deliberately left undefined by the composer, was tackled last week by the Quadraphonnes.

“How do these images make you feel? If you were a poet, what words come to mind? A dancer, how would you move? A musician, what notes would you play?”

Today at noon
Portland Center Stage
Mezzanine, Gerding Theater at the Armory

This creative exploration is in anticipation of Third Angle’s innovative concert “Chance/Perchance: A Musical Happening,” on Friday, March 5 — featuring work by David Schiff, Terry Riley and Mark Applebaum — at the Hollywood Theatre. For more information on Third Angle and their upcoming performance Click Here