Let's do it, dudes

The first time was just a tease.

After a dozen exceedingly hot (and single) guys braved the first ever Just Out/Q Center Single Guys Bunco Night last month, it's time to move to second base.

Come out and join me and other great guys for a night of gaming which requires zero brain cells and even less talent. Just flash your gleaming smile or impress with witty banter while you roll the dice and switch partners faster than a night at Steam Portland.


Single Guy's Bunco
hosted by SMB, sponsored by Just Out
Sunday, May 11
5:30 pm to 7:30 pm (ish)
Q Center, 69 SE Taylor, PDX

Questions? Call 503-236-1252, ex. 16, or e-mail SMB at stephen@justout.com

Classical crystal ball gazing

I've got a new piece up on Crosscut.com, where I offer some crystal ball gazing for Portland's art-music scene, by way of nominating four current major players as among the best poised to "grow into scene-shifting classical music leaders." Read on.

(that's PSU's Ken Selden, director of orchestral activities, above)

Let's do a bit of crystal ball gazing. Ten years from now, let's say.

Portland, Oregon has further transformed itself from a sleepy Seattle little sister to a fully cosmopolitan city offering the country's most efficient public transit system, the most green-collar jobs, and a robustly supported arts scene where institutional glamour and downtown grit rub friendly weekend shoulders. Can you see it?

It may be closer than you think. As Portland continues to scoop up national acclaim for its advances on the pop music, film, and food fronts, the classical or "art music" scene hums along with just the same ear-popping vibrancy. In addition to the regular roster of touring circuit appearances by the current A-list classical music stars — Lang Lang and Joshua Bell next season at the Oregon Symphony; Dawn Upshaw with Friends of Chamber Music — a number of class-act musicians are roosting in Stumptown, and happily so. Some come for institutional connections: as a section member in the Oregon Symphony or member of Portland Opera's Studio Artist program, for example. Others, scrappy self-starters, come because Portland's rep as an affable, affordable city for young creatives is well-deserved. The latter is what lured me here from Boston two years ago.

As for who's leading the charge, I'd like to nominate four Portland-based musicians — a music administrator, blogging Oregon Symphony member, young conductor, and ambitious educator — as having especially promising potential for growing into scene-shifting classical-music leaders. I asked each to talk about why they're committed to making art music work in a wonky "big town," where they feel they can make an impact, and who they consider to be important other folks making noise on the PDX classical circuit.

And then I go on to chat with/about those four top-shelf musicians/music administrators in the city, all worthy of attention: conductor Ryan Heller, Oregon Symphony violist and blogger Charles Noble, administrator slash singer Mark Powell and PSU orchestral director Ken Selden.

Each of those four, in turn, recommended four folks they felt would be major Portland art-music players in the years ahead. Some names that surfaced: Elaine Calder, Carlos Kalmar and Ron Blessinger (twice each); Gil Seeley, Scott Tuomi, Tuesday Rupp, Hamilton Cheifetz, and a few others.

Props to The Builders and The Butchers

Applause applause for The Builders and The Butchers, winners of Willamette Week's "Best New Band 2008" poll.

As you can see from the ballot I filed with WW's music section, I voted B & B as #2 in my top 5 choices. For the record, my top five were 1) The Lonely H, 2) The Builders and the Butchers, 3) Ethan Rose, 4) Holcombe Waller & The Healers, 5) Chris Robley & The Fear of Heights. (I was one of 129 music professionals voting in the poll)

The full WW Best New Band '08 issue is online here. Congrats to Amy, Casey and the whole gang at WW on a great assemblage of PDX up-and-comers!

Review: BodyVox in "Horizontal Leanings"

(cross-posted from the Just Out blog)

BodyVox is a Portland-based modern dance outfit slick as they come. Sexy high-art promo shots, YouTube videos and multimedia collaborations with film and live music are some of their signature appeals. Leave the groundbreaking dance-making and challenging material to other companies: BodyVox just wants to have a good time.

That can be gratifying. It can also be grating. The company’s new show, “Horizontal Leanings,” seen May 3 at the Newmark Theatre, is a bit of both.

Co-artistic directors Jamey Hampton and Ashley Roland have rounded up an especially big family of collaborators for this ambitious new work: a company of twelve dancers, new music by LA composers Vivek Maddala and John Smith performed mostly live by Third Angle New Music, film work by Hampton and Mitchell Rose, a parade of partially recycled costumes by Roland and inventive stage lighting by Mark LaPierre. Even Tad Savinar, that legendary Oregon artist, has signed on as a “dramaturgical consultant” to the project, whatever that means.

That’s a lot of talent to spend, and it makes the resulting evening - a slapdash and too frequently forgettable 90 minutes of dance theater - all the more frustrating.

The work, shaped as fourteen cutely titled self-contained vignettes, races through scenes like an idyllic meadow with the dancers as little lambs (“Urban Meadow”), a shape-shifting trio for three guys in their underwear (“Generator”) and two funky full-on dance off parties (“Green Rave 1” and the inevitable sequel, “Green Rave 2”) that look like ersatz “In Living Color” Fly Girl skits ten years too late. One audience member behind me described the music for those numbers as “a drumbeat from 1986 mixed with Yanni,” and he’s not far off. Third Angle New Music ensemble, augmented with pre-recorded percussion tracks, gave it their all.

Hampton and Roland’s movement vocabulary is safely accessible by any 21st century standard. Their dancers seem to have a good time, though the disagreement in style – is the elbow sharp or soft? Are the legs locked or loose? – detracts. There’s one bonafide bonfire of a dancer stashed in the company: that would be redheaded Laura Haney, a scorching presence. Let’s see more of her.

The house was full, the audience responded warmly, and the Third Angle musicians even joined the dancers for a butt-shaking onstage finale. Clearly BodyVox is just a company of dancers that want to have fun. And really, what’s so wrong with that?

Seventh column

"The Party's Over. Maybe It's Time to Dry Out... Again" - Just Out newsmag, May 2, 2008

What's a girl to do?

Where has the Brit-band Bat for Lashes been all my life?

A coworker just turned me on to them this week, and I was instantly taken with the feint-voiced alto of Natasha Khan and the spare electronic ostinato knocking around in a jumble of bass and drums in their best song so far, "What's a girl to do?"

Plus, the video's just all sorts of eerie.

Tagged by MA in Chicago

BM of Mysteries Abysmal has called on me to serve Blogistan. The rules of the meme:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

OK, so I took a jaunt over to coworker Kell's office in the Just Out Art Department to get a book (my JO office is filled with stacks of papers, dictionaries and AP style books - and that's about it. Yuck). He offered me this: "The World Without Us," by Alan Weisman.

However, what Moore refers to is a type of runoff and sedimentation that the Earth had hitherto never known in 5 billion years of geologic time - but likely will henceforth.

During his first 1,000-mile crossing of the gyre, Moore calculated half a pound for every 100 square meters of debris on the surface, and arrived at 3 million tons of plastic. His estimate, it turned out, was corroborated by U.S. Navy calculations.

And so I now tag Lelo in NoPo, Mark's Rants and Raves, Recovering Straight Girl, The Last Debate and Zauberwelt.