Sounds of the Season

Dear Friends,

The holiday season is upon us, and I hope you all have the chance to spend at least some of it with family and friends. I will be taking a short trip to Vienna, but then it’s back to Portland to start the new year!

There’s been a wealth of great performances around our city, and I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy several of them. Oregon Ballet Theatre’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream was absolutely brilliant. This company just keeps getting better and better. I think my friend Christopher Stowell is a great leader, and the artistic level has increased since his arrival. The production had three very different styles integrated into one evening. Mendelssohn’s Midsummer was great fun, but I was blown away by the deconstruction of Mozart in Almost Mozart. To have snippets of music, while the dance takes place during the silence—that is an absolutely stunning concept.

Cabaret was very nice indeed. The show features a talented cast, and I think this is one of the “warhorses” for Chris Coleman and Portland Center Stage. If you have actors who can sing this style, and singers who can really act, then you can do very well. I talked to some of the folks there and realized that the show went so well they had to extend it for another week and a half!

All of these wonderful productions, including the great concerts by the Symphony, show what a vibrant city we have.

See you soon,

Carlos