Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley presents Thunder & Starlight

Thunder & Starlight is a musical journey through the wondrous natural world with musicians from the Grammy-nominated orchestra A Far Cry.

Thunder and Starlight

Mauna Järvelä & Timo Alakotila: Hale Bopp, arr. Karl Doty

Osvaldo Golijov: Tenebrae

Deena T. Grossman: Songs of the River Po*

-intermission-

Ludwig van Beethoven: Symphony No. 6 in F major, Op. 68 (Pastorale), arr. Michael Gotthard Fischer 

*denotes side-by-side with students from the Salem-Keizer School District

Featuring musicians from the Grammy-nominated chamber orchestra A Far Cry:

• Miki-Sophia Cloud & Megumi Stohs Lewis, violins
• Caitlin Lynch & Jason Fisher, violas
• Hannah Collins & Rafi Popper-Keizer, cello

From flowing rivers to a blazing comet, tempestuous thunderstorms to the awe of viewing earth from space, Thunder and Starlight is a musical journey through the wonder of the natural world. The voyage begins with Hale-Bopp, a Finnish fiddle tune inspired by the eponymous comet. Osvaldo Golijov imagined Tenebrae to be music like “an orbiting spaceship that never touches the ground”. It was inspired by the composer witnessing the image of earth as a pale blue dot at a planetarium in New York. Oregonian composer Deena Grossman's Songs of the River Po, inspired by the Po River in Turin, Italy, will mark the celebratory return of PCM’s side-by-side performance with students from each of the Salem-Keizer Public School high school orchestra programs. The program will culminate with Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony arranged for string sextet (with Beethoven's blessing) shortly after the symphony's premiere. The music depicts sounds and scenes in the countryside with inscriptions from Beethoven including “scene by the brook”, “thunderstorm”, and “happy, grateful feelings after the storm”. 

100% of ticket sale proceeeds will be donated to provide private instrumental lessons to SKPS students for whom the cost would be otherwise prohibitive.