Oregon Music News

OMN will be celebrating tonight at The Secret Society with Sunbeam, Auditory Sculpture plus friends, and The Renato Caranto Project. It's free! See you at 7pm!

Today marks two years to the day since Oregon Music News went live in 2009.  It’s been an eventful year full growth and growing pains (a recent server move stagnated us for a couple of days), but a dedicated crew of OMNers has kept us afloat and flourishing through the trials and tribulations, chaos and triumphs.

As the story goes, the writers are now navigating the ship (or inmates running the asylum) as several key contributors stepped up to fill new roles, in addition to their normal written duties, during the last year.  We’d like to recognize the efforts of Ana Ammann as Publisher, Mark Niemann-Ross as Tech Guru (aka Media Strategist), Alaya Wyndham-Price as Director of Business Development, Brandon Ellison as Social Media Specialist, Alex Jones as Associate Editor, Jessica Black as Promotions Manager, and Annette Zuzio as Production Director (who we will miss dearly as she recently moved to LA).

The days, weeks and months flew by, especially as we tackled numerous festivals during the summer months, accompanied by a slew of regular contributors.  Our ridiculously talented and supportive team of photographers, writers and organizers allow OMN to publish fresh, local content on a daily basis–hardly a day passes without a new feature story, concert review, or piece of news.  Just take a look at the homepage on any given day to see a swath of names covering a variety of genres and events across Oregon and the NW–some 8,000+ posts have been published in our first two years!  From Classical to Metal to Family to the unclassifiable yet quintessentially understood, in Portland at least, Melting Pot, we cover it all in an attempt to comprehensively blanket the scene in Oregon.

We’ve also tried to build and support our community, sponsoring events like the Portland Jazz Festival, Mississippi Street Fair, Reel Music Festival, Silverton Wine & Jazz Festival, Soul’d Out and more, and we’ll continue to do so in the coming year.

We look forward to evolving technologically, capitalizing on mobile publishing opportunities, which we initiated this summer with two mobile, festival websites.  Spearheaded by Mark Niemann-Ross and photographer/writer Kevin Tomanka, OMN went mobile with festival sites for the Waterfront Blues Festival and PDX Pop Now!, and we look to continue this success with future, local festivals.

Tom D’Antoni, Editor-In-Chief
Chris Young, Managing Editor

The two of us have put our heads together and chosen some of our favorite from year two at OMN.  Enjoy.

• OMN’s youngest writer, Matthew Bernstein, recently wrote a touching story about Ian Mouser and his nonprofit My Voice Music.  As a teenager (still in his early teens!), Matthew is wise beyond his years and has impressed the OMN team with his ability, creativity and inquisitive nature, which of course makes him a natural interviewer. He’s a prodigy in every sense of the word.
• And OMN’s most experienced writer, Jack Berry, ever the sly and clever hipster, has brought five (or six) decades of Oregon musical experience to our pages. Anything he writes is worth diving into. You could search of his name and be delighted by any of his stories. Just last week his piece on the Jim Pepper documentary at the Reel Music Festival could not have been written by anyone else. Jack is unique and we’re proud he writes for us.
• OMN’s reliable, respected Classical Editor James Bash has made OMN’s coverage of Classical music, the best in the state. He writes the news, previews and reviews of every major concert in Portland and elsewhere, and in addition gives a glimpses of performers and composers that you just can’t find anywhere else. Take his September story: Oregon Symphony’s Frank Diliberto: Double bass whisperer + horse whisperer.
• Has there ever been a more unique look at the Mel Brown Jazz Camp than the one provided by our Mark Niemann-Ross. He didn’t just spend a few hours there observing and doing some interviews. He went there as a student and spent the week. His daily series on his experiences and those of his fellow (and much, much younger) students was one of the delights of OMN’s 2011. Find them here.
• Finding there’s less time to write when you’re also performing Publisher duties, Ana Ammann still managed to write a retrospective on the 10th anniversary of the Rock ‘n’ Roll Camp for Girls, which gave her “an opportunity to personally reflect on how the Portland music scene has enriched and impacted my life over the past ten years.”
• Attacking oodles of festivals, Brandon Ellison and Chris Young spent many weekends skittering from stage to stage, scribbling notes, copiously Tweeting, snapping photos, interviewing artists, enjoying the sunshine, and indulging whenever possible in whatever possible while sleeping little and writing a lot before doing it all over again–whether it was the next day, the next weekend or the next month.  Here’s Brandon’s comprehensive MFNW diary plus highlights from PDX Pop Now!, Bumbershoot, Sasquatch!, and a recent trip Treasure Island.
• Another festival-goer of the electronic persuasion, Eugene’s Mark Costigan and his photo/videography team put together several spectacular videos documenting the EMRG+N+SEE and Re:Generation festivals with words, stills and moving pictures featuring artist interviews and live footage.
• Although the Foo Fighters have failed to play Portland (yet!) supporting their new album, that has not stopped Kevin Tomanka from writing about them.  Tied for OMN’s #1 Foo fan, Kevin shot them in Montana (they day before they played Sasquatch!) and covered the screening of the Foocumentary Back and Forth, including an interview with director James Moll.
• Alaya Wyndham-Price wrote the definitive review of Lucinda Williams’ performance during the Waterfront Blues Festival in July. Many people misconstrued Williams’ on-stage behavior. Alaya got it right as you’ll see if you scroll down to read the comment left by her manager. Earlier in the week, Art Levine, OMN’s national correspondent, wrote an amazing profile of Williams.
• OMN’s Family Editor Dot Rust gives Oregon not only its most comprehensive coverage of “Kindie” but Oregon’s only coverage of that genre of family (aka children’s) music. She also had comprehensive coverage of the impending loss of the music degree program at Mount Hood Community College.
• Jessica Black provided us with amazing coverage of Holcombe Waller’s album release, including an interview and a stunning show review accompanied by photos from John Rudoff.
• Transcribing some of the most in-depth interviews OMN has published to date, we enjoyed Jeff Melton’s chats with Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson, Jon Anderson of Yes and Portland’s Tim DuRoche.  Also Andrew Woodworth’s quirky interview with Kevin Blackwell of Sassparilla.

We know we’ve left many stories out (including our own), but to tell you the truth, if you look back at the thousands of stories we ran in 2011, it’s pretty breathtaking, if we do say so ourselves.

And no, we have not forgotten our crew of photographic artists. Taken as a group, OMN has provided more photographs of concerts and portraits of Oregon musicians than any other publication. Here are a few examples:

• John Rudoff’s photo gallery of Storm Large, Pink Martini and the Oregon Symphony in September.
• Jon T. Cruz for everything heavy (alongside co-pilot Ruben Mosqueda) and some great shots from summer festivals like this gallery from the Vans Warped Tour 2011: Black Veil Brides at Washington County Fairplex in August.
• Jason Kaplan’s gallery of The Decemberists at the Schnitz in February plus lots of photos (and words) from Pickathon in August.
• Anthony Pidgeon for venue hopping during MFNW to snap so many photos.

Plus, take a look back at year one.

Come celebrate OMN’s 2nd birthday party on Wednesday, October 26th at The Secret Society. Doors open at 7pm, show starts at 7:30pm with the Renato Caranto Project followed by Auditory Sculpture and Sunbeam.  Get more details on the line up here; 21+, free.