Oregon Music News

Denali Porter

You may never have heard of the Monday Musical Club, but it has played a major role in Portland’s music life since 1904. Begun by women who wanted to promote music with educational programs and events, the Monday Musical Club played a hand in raising money to build the Civic Auditorium (now Keller Auditorium) by selling ornamental buttons at street corners for the hefty sum of $5. The Monday Musical Club also purchased musical instruments and provided free music lesson for children from low-income families.

In more recent years, the Monday Musical Club has awarded a lot of money as scholarship to young musicians and singers from the Portland metro area. Over the years the money given away has grown to over $10,000. Some of the prominent winners (with the winning year in parenthesis) are Douglas Feller (1974), Janet Groh (1976), Scott Tuomi (1977), Susan Smith (1979), Lisa Moffit (1979), Charlotte Pistor (1980), David Franzen (1984), George Shiolas (1984), Thomas Lauderdale (1988), Marty Jennings (1988), Julie Coleman (1989) and (1992), Chad Heltzel (1996), Robin Yu (1997), Ariana Falk (1998), Jacqueline Metz (2000), Audrey Luna (2001), Michelle Leipzig (2008), Natalie Yu (2009).

I spoke with Denali Porter, a longtime member of the Monday Musical Club who has served as its president and is currently recording secretary. Her husband, Dick Porter, has been a member of the club since the 1990s and serves as its treasurer.

The club started in a very different era than today.

Denali: Yes; it was founded by women back in the days when women were listed by their husband’s names. So the club’s membership only had women for a long time. That was during a time when husbands brought home the bacon. Nowadays, women work regular jobs and aren’t home as much.

How many members does the club have?

Denali: It’s around 130. It has men and women.

How does someone join?

Denali: You need to be sponsored by someone in the club. This is easy enough to do. We have a web site and people can contact us. I can’t remember us ever turning anyone away.

The initiation fee for new members is $10, and the dues are just $30 a year. That’s all. We meet on the first Monday of every month in the penthouse of Holladay Park Plaza at one o’clock in the afternoon. We offer a program and that has entertainment. We often hire professional musicians from all over Portland. Sometimes they come from Portland Opera or the Oregon Symphony. Sometime we feature a talented youth group. We have soloists as well as ensembles. We usually have a business meeting and refreshments of coffee, tea and dessert afterwards.

But $30 isn’t very much. How do you get the money to give away $10,000 for scholarships?

Denali: We have fundraising events like a St. Patrick’s Day luncheon, which is our biggest fundraiser this year. We also have a Fall Music Sampler that is a major fundraiser, and we have a number of other events to raise money. It varies from year to year.

Dick: I think that we plan to give away $12,000 this year. We also donate money to Portland Opera, the Oregon Symphony, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Youth Symphony, and the Community Music Center. We are looking at adding another organization this year.

Tell us about the competition.

Denali: The competition is open to young artists from 16 to 22 years old in three categories: voice, strings, and piano. The contestants have to play in front of a jury. They have until March 12 to get their application in. The auditions will take place on April 10th at Holladay Park Plaza.

The ongoing debate among club members is whether we give $5,000 or more as a top prize. But most of us feel that we should spread it around. We usually give away around a $1,000 or more to the top winners and less to other. But we also have introduced some encouragement awards that are $200 or more. We need to encourage those who won’t go to music conservatories. They are musicians who help to educate and perform on a local level.

What else does the club offer?

Denali: The club has a choir, which meets every Tuesday morning and gives concerts. The club also has several members who practice pieces for two pianos. I’m one of the pianists.

Years ago, we used to have a 10-piano group and a group that presented plays. They did Shakespeare with the women playing men’s parts. During its heyday, the club gave seven musicals a year, and, once in a while, we still put together a big program. When I talk about giving seven musicales a year, I am referring to a time when we also met each month in the morning at private homes and entertained each other.

The club has played an interesting part in Portland’s history, and you can read it, because the notebooks from past presidents are given to the Multnomah County Library. You can read through a lot of hand-written minutes.

How did you get the name Denali?

Denali: My parents were in Alaska in 1927 as Methodist missionaries and they named me after the mountain. For the longest time, people didn’t know how to pronounce my name, but ever since that truck came out with that name, everyone knows how to say it correctly. What a relief!