While diversity may be verboten in some current political circles, it’s a definite boon in the arts, and especially in music, which has always advanced through the creative combination of diverse cultural influences. As Portland-born American composer Lou Harrison used to say, “Enjoy hybrid music — because that’s all there is!”
This winter’s most creative and compelling classical concerts all benefit from their assiduous embrace of diverse influences, from Native American, Latino, Asian American and Black composers, among others.
The season also provides several welcome showcases for music written by women, who after all make up more than half the planet’s human population, yet — like the other previously marginalized groups here — were firmly excluded from classical music programs for centuries. How lucky we are to live in a time and place where we can easily experience a full range of human creativity on classical music stages.
Pyxis Quartet: The Portland School II
So many terrific composers have moved here, or grown up here, or grown up here and moved back in recent years that Oregon ArtsWatch has posited the existence of a “Portland School” of composers, similar to others that arose at particularly fertile moments and places in music history. Fortunately, Portland composers defy easy stereotyping, as demonstrated in this 45th Parallel Universe concert of music by David Schiff (a tribute to Duke Ellington), and Mark Orton, plus a pair of world premieres by Oregon Symphony musician/composers Nancy Ives and James Shields, and the progeny of two other local stalwarts, Alejandro Belgique, all performed by veteran Oregon Symphony musicians.
7 p.m. Jan. 20, Polaris Hall, 625 N. Killingsworth Court. $26-$38. www.45thparallelpdx.org.
Orchestra Nova Northwest: ¡El Espectacular!
The former Columbia Symphony displays an array of musical styles, from Japanese taiko, Western classical and Pan American folk, and even brings in BodyVox dancers, Cognizant young artists, and drag performer Poison Waters. One highlight: the new flute concerto by Portland-based composer and Portland Youth Philharmonic conductor Giancarlo D’Addona Castro, featuring illustrious flute soloist (and Orchestra Nova Northwest executive director) Adam Eccleston.
7:30 p.m. Jan. 24, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 S.W. Crescent St., Beaverton; $19.50-$69.50. thereser.org.
Steven Banks & Xak Bjerken: Beethoven, Barber & Blues
When Chamber Music Northwest brought the innovative Kenari Saxophone Quartet to town a few years back, listeners marveled at the surprising variety and even delicacy of sounds the foursome could conjure from instruments generally associated with bluesy wailing. Now one of its award-winning members, Steven Banks, joins pianist Xak Bjerken in a program of saxed-up arrangements of music by the great 20th century neo-romantic American composer Samuel Barber, Beethoven, Saint-Saëns, and contemporary American composer John Musto’s powerful, plangent “Shadow of the Blues.”
7:30 p.m. Jan. 29. The Old Church, 1422 S.W. 11th Ave. $10-$62. cmnw.org.
Ruckus and Davóne Tines: What is Your Hand in This?
Two artists renowned for creatively reimagining old ways converge in this unique concert that pairs one of today’s most charismatic and restlessly imaginative bass-baritones, and an early music ensemble that infuses energetic, historically informed performance practices into American roots music. In this Friends of Chamber Music presentation, their fascinating Americana program ranges across the centuries, from colonial hymns, spirituals and 19th century ballads to a Handel tune to contemporary classical and pop songs, all connected (appropriately in this anniversary year of the Declaration of Independence) by the theme of American revolution.
7:30 p.m. Feb. 5, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 S.W. Crescent St., Beaverton; $36.50-$67.50, thereser.org.
Oregon Symphony: Pictures at an Exhibition
Modest Mussorgsky’s justly famous “musical gallery crawl” may serve as the concert title, but the most thrilling music on the program is acclaimed British American composer Anna Clyne’s recent “Color Field,” named for that genre of artists that includes one-time Portlander Mark Rothko, whose masterpiece “Orange, Red, Yellow” inspired Clyne’s piece. (Maybe check out the Rothkos at the Portland Art Museum before the show.) Bonus: Esteemed violinist Gil Shaham stars in another staple, Bruch’s romantic first violin concerto.
7:30 p.m. Feb. 7 and 2 p.m. Feb. 8, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway; $35-$102. orsymphony.org.
Fear No Music: Looking Inward, Spacing Out
The veteran new music ensemble enlists Reed College conductor Shohei Kobayashi and the school’s Musicum Collegium in sounds that use the venue’s space to blur the boundaries between audiences and performers and achieve, well, spacey sonic effects. The program includes Pulitzer Prize-winning American composer Henry Brant’s “Mass in Gregorian Chant” for 20 flutists, and works by another American musical pioneer, Pauline Oliveros, Portland’s own Nancy Ives, Jukka Tiensuu, and Kurt Nystedt.
7:30 p.m. Feb. 20, Reed College Performing Arts Building Atrium, 3017 S.E. Woodstock Blvd. Suggested donation $25. fearnomusic.org.
mousai REMIX: Trailblazing Women
45th Parallel Universe’s all-female string quartet composed of Oregon Symphony musicians plays 21st century American music by Lisa Bielawa (drawn from her score for a production of Euripides’ “The Trojan Women”) and cellist/composer Tomeka Reid, whose jazz-tinged “Prospective Dwellers” was inspired by interviews with Chicagoans who saw their South Side Black neighborhood losing its sense of community. The show also includes music written by 19th century German composer Fanny Mendelssohn and 20th century Polish composer Grażyna Bacewicz.
7 p.m. March 2, Show Bar, 1300 S.E. Stark St. $20-$30. 45thparallelpdx.org.
Portland Chamber Orchestra: Lion & Lotus
This Lunar New Year concert features music by American composers influenced by their Asian heritages. Prize-winning Portland-born composer Oswald Huỳnh’s “Beauty Despite Daylight” draws on Vietnamese elements, while eminent Chinese American composer Bright Sheng’s “Postcards” incorporates folk music styles from four regions in China. The concert also includes traditional tunes, classical works by Frederick Delius and Franz von Suppé, and stage antics by White Lotus Foundation Lion Dancers, Oregon’s largest lion dance team.
7:30 p.m. March 3, Patricia Reser Center for the Arts, 12625 S.W. Crescent St., Beaverton; $19.50-$64.50, thereser.org.
Portland Opera: “Fellow Travelers”
Based on Thomas Mallon’s best-selling novel, this lauded 2016 opera by composer Gregory Spears, librettist Greg Pierce and director Kevin Newbury chronicles a couple’s turbulent lives during the McCarthy-era Lavender Scare, when government agents investigated, interrogated and purged queer Americans from federal jobs, devastating thousands of careers and lives.
7:30 p.m. March 7, 11 and 13, and 2 p.m. March 15, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway. $31-$106. portlandopera.org.
Resonance Ensemble: North American Indigenous Songbook
Until recently, U.S. classical music institutions generally treated Native American music with the same respect colonizers accorded Indigenous Americans — almost none. Conductor/pianist Timothy Long, who grew up in an Oklahoma Choctaw family, recently began redressing that injustice by commissioning new vocal music by Indigenous composers across the continent. In this West Coast premiere, Portland’s Resonance vocal ensemble will sing some of those new works, grounded in tradition while gazing forward. Local composer Danielle Jagelski (Oneida Nation and Red Cliff Band of Ojibwe), will also conduct several of her choral works that “speak to resilience, identity, and ancestral memory.”
2 p.m. March 8, Alberta Rose Theatre, 3000 N.E. Alberta St. $19.75-$47.75. resonancechoral.org.
Cascadia Composers: Concert Mosaic
For International Women’s Day 2026, a trio of female musicians will perform new music by Northwest women composers Dianne Davies, Judy Fischbach, Theresa Koon, Lisa Marsh, Bonnie Miksch, Jan Mittelstaedt, Christina Rusnak, Lisa Neher and Linda Woody, each accompanied by original visual art created in collaboration with a local artist.
7 p.m. March 8. The Old Church, 1422 S.W. 11th Ave. $9-$27. cascadiacomposers.org.
Third Angle New Music: “Dies Irae, Desirée”
In this new satirical multimedia chamber opera by composer Maria Finkelmeier and Portland-based librettist Brady Evan Walker, a cult leader leads her followers through multiple twists and turns as they seek enlightenment — with extraterrestrial assistance.
7:30 p.m. March 13-14 and 2 p.m. March 14-15, The Vault Theater, 350 E. Main St, Hillsboro. $30-$40. thirdangle.org.
Portland Baroque Orchestra: Hidden Women of Rome: Lost Music of Sacred Divas
Feminism didn’t start in the 20th century. When the colorful 17th century Swedish queen Christina abdicated her throne, converted to Catholicism and moved to Rome, she continued being a strong and effective advocate for the arts, including sacred music written for singing nuns. Portland Baroque Voices sings some of those stirring sounds, written by Italian composer Alessandro Melani, and Portland Baroque Orchestra will also play chamber music by two of the greatest Italian early Baroque composers of her era, Arcangelo Corelli and Alessandro Scarlatti, and more.
7 p.m. March 14, First Congregational Church, 1126 S.W. Park Ave., and 3 p.m. March 15, Kaul Auditorium, Reed College, 3017 S.E. Woodstock Blvd. $28-$79. pbo.org.
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