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Oregon Mandolin Orchestra's Summer in Paris
The following description was submitted by the event organizer.
Celebrate Summer in Paris at the Oregon Mandolin Orchestra’s SW Portland matinee concert.
The concert program’s oldest piece, Lully Gavotte, was composed in 1686 by Marin Marais. Two compositions by Gabriel Fauré, Cantique de Jean Racine and Berceuse, were penned in the mid-1860s.
An 1876-vintage piece by Léo Delibes, Pizzicati, will be instantly recognizable for being used as the lighthearted soundtrack to dance scenes in modern films and cartoons.
La Mer and La Vie En Rose, made famous by vocalists as diverse as Bobby Darin and Édith Piaf, respectively, captivated the music scene in the 1940s, dominating radio play on both sides of the Atlantic.
Joining them are Tears and Vous et Moi, two songs that exemplify Parisian jazz of the same decade, were written — or popularized by — guitarist Django Reinhardt, whose Quintette du Hot Club de France pioneered jazz performed by an all-string band.
Meanwhile, the concert program’s newest piece, Meditation On A Sunken Cathedral, was composed in 2002 by Dr. James S. Imhoff, a music professor who plays mandocello in the OMO. Imhoff was inspired by French composer Claude Debussy’s La Cathédrale Engloutie, a piano prelude about a mythic cathedral that sank into the sea. In Meditation, the cathedral dramatically rises from the waters before quietly sinking again into the deep.
“Selecting music for a concert program is a funny thing,” said Christian McKee, OMO music director. “Sometimes I have a central theme in mind, and other times a unifying theme emerges during the process. Our ‘Summer in Paris’ program was one of the latter. I had chosen about four pieces before I realized they were all by French composers! At that point, continuing in that same vein seemed only logical and, despite the focus, it’s quite a varied program, spanning light opera to popular songs.”
Cost: $10 – $15