Chamber Music Northwest’s Summer Festival
Live classical music and laid-back vibes meet at this annual summer festival.
Oregon Arts Watch
Chamber Music Northwest (CMNW) manages an unusual combination: classical music played by musicians of the highest caliber in an informal, intimate setting. Since 1971, chamber musicians have flocked to Southeast Portland’s Reed College to play the great classic repertoire with their friends. Music fans share picnics and wine on the campus lawn before heading indoors to hear the sublime music. Returning June 24–July 28, 2019, the festival is one of Portland’s rites of summer. (CMNW also produces a shorter winter festival in January, but picnics on the lawns of Reed College are not involved.)
Since 1971, chamber musicians have flocked to Southeast Portland’s Reed College to play the great classic repertoire with their friends.
CMNW Summer Festival History
The festival was created by violinist Sergiu Luca, who served as artistic director until 1981, when he was replaced by clarinetist David Shifrin. Prior to becoming a professor of music at Yale University and artistic director of the Chamber Music Society at Yale series, Shifrin was artistic director of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center from 1992 to 2004. Those connections have kept the pipeline of excellent musicians flowing to Portland, summer after summer. These include young musicians and ensembles chosen for the Protégé Project, who receive coaching from great musicians before rehearsing and performing with them at the festival.
Over the years, the summer festival has evolved, spreading out from its Reed College base to clubs and concert halls across the city. The music has changed, too, extending to include music from the 20th and 21st centuries, exploring musical Americana like classic jazz standards from artists like Dizzy Gillespie and a composer’s take on 1960s rock-n-roll fantasy.
Classical Music in Portland
CMNW Summer Festival 2019
Clarinetist extraordinaire David Shifrin ended his nearly four-decade run as CMNW Artistic Director with an opening week full of clarinets. No fewer than 27 all-star clarinetists performed two centuries of clarinet music ranging from Mozart — the first great composer to write for the instrument — to new works by Libby Larsen and Michele Mangani.
The festival opened with an all-Mozart concert at Reed College on Monday (repeated Tuesday at Portland State University), featuring the enchanting Quintet for Clarinet and String Quartet and the Notturni for Soprano, Mezzo-Soprano, Baritone, and Three Basset Horns. For the season’s first Casual Wednesday, jazz clarinetist Ken Peplowski performed at Alberta Rose Theater with his quartet. Thursday, back at Reed, the clarinet all-stars played Mendelssohn and Gershwin alongside newer works by Alexander Kukelka and Jeff Scott.
Finally, the week ended where it began: with Mozart. A small orchestra of CMNW regulars backed the winner of CMNW’s International Clarinet Celebration Young Artists Competition on Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto in A Major.
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