Oregon Music News

Bill Crane, organist, choir director, and arts enthusiast will turn 60 in February. To celebrate his birthday, Crane will put his keyboard artistry on display in a series of one-hour concerts every day for one week from February 25th to March 2nd.  All of the concerts, many of which will feature other collaborative musicians, are free and will start at 6 pm. The locations are as follows:

• Saturday, February 25, Grace Memorial Episcopal Church (NE 17th and Weidler)

• Sunday, February 26, First Presbyterian Church, (SW 12th and Alder)

• Monday, February 27, Eliot Hall Chapel on the Reed College Campus (3203 SE Woodstock Boulevard)

• Tuesday, February 28, location Sherman Clay Pianos (131 NW 13th)

• Wednesday, February 29, Body Vox (NW 17th and Northrup)

• Thursday, March 1, Community Music Center (3350 Southeast Francis Street)

• Friday, March 2, Trinity Cathedral (NW 19th and Everett)

Some of you may recall that in March of 2009, Crane joined with Pink Martini leader Thomas Lauderdale to produce “24/7,” a highly acclaimed 24-hour-long marathon concert in Portland marking the seventh anniversary of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Crane earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music at Florida State University before completing postgraduate studies in Scola Cantorum de Paris.

I met him at his home in NE Portland to find out more about his birthday concert extravaganza.

Did you come up with this idea after waking up from a dream in the middle of the night?

Crane:  It wasn’t so dramatic, really. I feel that some classical music concerts and concert audiences are too complacent. Most concerts are held at 7:30 or 8 in the evening. Performers mostly use the same venues. Everything is pretty orthodox. But I think that it is okay to overwhelm people with music once in a while.

Beethoven would have approved of that! He was noted for doing concerts with a lot of music.

Crane:  Throughout the Nineteenth Century and at the beginning of the Twentieth Century, you can read these programs of huge concerts. There were Boston Symphony programs in the 1930s went on for three and a half hours, and they did a different program every week during a 45 week season.

So there’s the challenge of doing seven concerts in a row. I’d like to see if I can do it. It’s a real endurance test. Most of the music I’ve programed is new to me. There are many pieces that I’ve been meaning to play for many years. I’ve said to myself, “Almost dead, better learn it!”

All of the concerts start at six o’clock in the evening and will be done without intermission. Hopefully, on week days, people can come from the office, hear the music, and still have the evening to do something else.

What was your idea when you programmed all these pieces?

Crane:  I’m principally an organist; so I wanted to end with the series with an organ recital at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, because that’s the best organ in several hundred miles. The date that was available for me to play that organ was Friday, March 2^nd.  So that put a stake in the ground, and I backed up my planning from that date.

So your birthday is not on that day?

Crane:  No, it’s on Monday, February 27^th, which is the third concert in the series. I also wanted to play at First Presbyterian so that I would have two organ recitals in the series. The date available at the First Presbyterian was Sunday the 26^th.

Grace Memorial Episcopal has recently purchased a fabulous Steinway grand. That piano is going to be a game-changer for Portland, because Grace Memorial has a great acoustic. The church has a large parking lot, and there’s public transportation and coffee shops nearby.

So that’s your opening concert?

Crane:  Yes, I’ve wanted to do a piano recital. That program has pieces by Couperin, Schubert, Brahms, Poulenc, and Rachmaninoff. Poulenc’s “Babar the Elephant” is surprising hard, but a lot of fun. The music is really funky. The wonderful actress Gretchen Corbett will be the narrator in that piece. She had never heard the music before; so she is really excited about it.

The next concert is your organ recital at Frist Presbyterian.

Crane: I’ll start the concert with Sweelinck’s “My young life hath an end,” which seems fitting since that will be my last day at age 59.

[Laughter]

I play some Bach, and a sonata by Hindemith that has a phantasie in the middle that goes wild and vivid without any of the goofy mad-organist-in-a-cape-in-the-darkened-cathedral business that is typical of so much organ music. I also play the first movement from Widor’s Fifth Symphony. I think that this is the most interesting and beautiful part of that work, even though the last movement is the one that is the most familiar.

The concert on your birthday will take place at the Eliot Hall Chapel at Reed College.

Crane: The concert will have a variety of songs by composers like Reynaldo Hahn, Sergei, Rachmaninoff, Manuel de Falla, and Samuel Barber. They will be sung by Ida Rae Cahana, who is the cantor designate of Congregation Beth Israel. She was the senior cantor at the Central Synagogue in Manhattan for a number of years before moving to Portland. For our concert, she will be singing in French, Russian, Spanish, and English. The Barber piece is “Knoxville, Summer of 1915.” That piece ranks up as one of my favorite pieces in the world.

The fourth program is all-chamber music at Sherman Clay Pianos in the Pearl District.

Crane: Violinist Greg Ewer and cellist Justin Kagan from 45^th Parallel will be my accomplices in this concert. I’ll open with the Sonata No. 1 in e minor for cello and piano by Brahms. Then Greg and I will play Bolcom’s “Graceful Ghost Rag,” which is a real contrasty piece. Then all three of us will play the Mendelssohn Piano Trio. It should be great fun.

The next concert, Program 5, is your risqué one.

Crane: I decided to do a crazy music program. I get exasperated with PICA and the Time Based Art Festival. They have such goofy performance art stuff. Well, I’ve decided to out-goof them. So, this concert starts with John Cage’s “Amores suite for prepared piano and percussion instruments.” We will have three percussionists from Portland State University playing the tom toms and pod rattle. I’ve played the solo piano sections of this piece several times, including once in the American Ambassador’s residence in Paris.

That will be followed by a piece of tonality by Couperin that I will play on my harpsichord. I’ll follow that with Cage’s “Suite for Toy Piano,” which I’ll play on my toy piano. I lost track of the one that I used to have from childhood, but I found one on Craigslist.

What is the La bouboisie dans la ville des roses?

Crane: That’s my pièce de résistance. The bouboisie is my made up work for the boobs who go to the TBA stuff. I’ll play the Bach violin chaconne that Brahms transcribed for left-hand piano while a tattoo artist tattoos my right arm. There will be a male dance clad in jockstrap and chaps, two young gals doing hula hoops, whip cream, and a cake.

This isn’t going to be a real tattoo, is it?

Crane:  Yes.

Are you nuts?

Crane: Well, if the piece falls apart, we’ll still have cake and whip cream.

So if you can still play, you’ve got a concert the next day.

Crane: That concert will take place at Community Music Center. It will feature the singing of soprano Lisa Mooyman and baritone Jimmy Wilcox and one piece will have David Hattner on the clarinet. We’ll be doing music by Handel, Faure, Schubert, Rorem, Blitzstein, and Vaughan Williams. Wilcox is a singer that I accompanied years ago, when he was a young student. Now he has a performance degree from Northwestern and a formidable voice. Mooyman is one of our area’s best singers, and I’ve worked with her before. Hattner is the director of the Portland Youth Philharmonic and a superb clarinetist.

The grand finale is your organ concert at Trinity Episcopal.

Crane: I’ll open with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in e-minor (“Wedge”), and follow it with “Mosaic” by Jean Langlais. Next will be Frank Martin’s “Church Sonata” for flute and organ, which will feature Abby Mages on the flute. I’ll wind everything up with Maurice Durufle’s Suite for organ, Opus 5. It’s a great piece that is really challenging.

You’ve drawn on a lot of other artists in these performances.

Crane: Some of the concerts feature me as a soloist and others are collaborative performances with other artists. One of the great things about Portland is that we have such wonderful, high-caliber artists here. Whenever prima-donnas move here, they stay for only a couple of years.

I feel grateful to Portland for the wonderful life that I’ve been able to live here. So these concerts are my thank you to the city.