Preview concert will give a taste of Astoria Music Festival

by James Bash on February 8, 2010

As a preview of the , which will take place June 18 through June 27, the festival’s artistic director, Keith Clark, will give a special presentation this Wednesday (February 10) at 7:30 pm at the Clatsop Community College Performing Arts Center. This will be a multi-media show with lots of information about Vienna from the fin de siècle up through the 1920s. The concert portion will be a performance of Schoenberg’s “Pierrot Lunaire” by The Bergamo Ensemble.

The press release has more details:

Artistic Director Keith Clark hosts a multi-media introduction to the cultural life of early 20th Century Vienna, the creative hothouse of Freud, Mahler, Gustav Klimt, Arnold Schoenberg and this summer’s featured opera: Alban Berg’s Wozzeck. The evening includes visual examples of the Expressionistic art of Egon Schiele and Oskar Kokoschka and Jugenstil style of Gustav Klimt as well as the music of Gustav Mahler and Berg’s teacher Arnold Schoenberg.

The program includes a rare performance of Schoenberg’s Pierrot Lunaire, a revolutionary work for singing actress and chamber ensemble, filled with Freudian dreams and nightmares. Originally conceived as a Berlin cabaret act, Pierrot Lunaire tells of the sad clown Pierrot and his love for Columbine, in a unique “Song-Speech” vocal style later used by Schoenberg’s student Alban Berg in his opera Wozzeck. Pierrot Lunaire will be performed by The Bergamo Ensemble, a virtuoso chamber ensemble formed at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, featuring Portland native Amy Foot, soprano. The work will be performed in German with English super titles.

James Bash

James Bash writes articles for a variety of publications, including magazines such as Opera America, Open Spaces, Opera, MUSO, International Arts Manager, American Record Guide, Symphony, Opera Canada, and PSU Magazine. The newspapers include Crosscut, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Oregonian, The Columbian, The Portland Tribune, The Register-Guard, and Willamette Week. James was a fellow to the 2008 NEA Journalism Institute for Classical Music and Opera. He is a member of the Music Critics Association of North America (mcana.org) and lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kathy.