Oh it’s gonna be a grand Mahler Monday…

So, I’m sorry. But I wanted you to know why some people have not been able to attend concerts, and we miss them.

Cant wait to read that David!

Cant wait to read that Leanne!

May the poems of the street sing you to your rest!

Thanks, Howard. Have a great kickoff concert weekend; my very best to so many choral friends.

An Artsy story on this topic: https://www.artsy.net/article/artsy-editorial-bob-ross-owes-happy-trees-forgotten-painter

So sweet of you, Elizabeth!!!

Hey, thanks, Janet! Will be in touch.

Thank you for your comment, JD. It was a interesting topic to research. I learned a lot.

as noted in reply to your comment in carol tatch’s op-ed, this number included both staff and board (https://racc.org/about/staff-and-board/): racc does not in fact have a bloated staff, but like many nonprofits dedicated to their mission, they do not have enough workers to do all that needs to be done, and work very hard to make up for that fact.

mike & michelle agree with all that you said, rob.
they are speaking of the likely financial inefficiency of *moving* racc’s work back into city government.

As a fellow city resident, I appreciate your concern over deteriorating conditions but arts funding is not some side issue — the arts create employment for hundreds of people, from performers and teachers to ticket-takers and concession employees. Also, numerous studies have shown schools that promote the arts produce graduates who are less likely to fail out and more likely to succeed. One reason young people get interested in crime is they’re not interested in school — and arts, like sports and other activities, make school a fun, safe place for children to grow and thrive. And there are numerous studies now available online showing schools wit music and/or other arts programs produce graduates more likely to pursue post-high-school academic and business opportunities than schools that offer little or no arts education. All these issues are related to one another. We might have less problems in our streets if we had more arts taking place in our schools.

That was staff and board.
https://racc.org/about/staff-and-board/

Absolutely Mike, I am in Agreement. Let the city continue to try and figure out how to utilize the hundreds of millions of unspent tax dollars sitting in their coffers for our homeless crisis, drug crisis, mental health crisis. These are the reasons people are not returning downtown. Surely they can afford to keep a program (RACC) that is working and focus on the crisis in our streets.

wat? what scene would that be?

I adore Nasalrod, but in what world is a 4-piece an oddity?

Much of that is covered in RACC’s FAQ: https://racc.org/frequently-asked-questions/

This message is from Hans Radtke. I was a close friend to Pat woods and Walt Curtis in High School and later. Pat Woods died in Viet Nam in 1968…After he had served in the Peace Corps in Bali and Thailand from 1964 to 1966. It still saddens me and pisses me off to think about that senseless War that Pat could not get out off. Walt Curtis and I went to school at Oregon City and Portland State. The last time I saw him was on his 70th birthday (I bought his lunch), he told me he was drinking two bottles of wine a day. It is a wonder that he lived so long. My friendship with Pat and Walt were so different. Pat with a Catholic upbringing, always doing the right thing…and Walt the counter culture poet…I miss them both. If there is to be a memorial for Walt please let me know… Hans Radtke

Dear Mayor Wheeler and Commissioner Ryan and members of City Council ,

I’m writing to express my distress at the city’s decision to end its 28 year contract with RACC. I came to Portland in 1985 when RACC was still a city agency called MAC and I was an active member of the art community when the transition was made from city agency to the non profit RACC. Since then I’ve partnered with RACC as a selection committee member, public artist, workshop leader and grant recipient. As a public artist I’ve also worked with numerous other arts commissions in Washington, California, Rhode Island, Arizona and Maryland. RACC and King County, Washington’s 4Culture, both non profits, stand out among many many others as efficient, visionary, community oriented and leaders in arts’ administration nationally. Their relative independence from government bureaucracy has made them more knowledgeable stewards of their regions’ cultures, and better advocates for art and artists. Whatever issues may or may not have arisen in the last few years since Eloise Damrosch retired as director of RACC, returning arts administration to the city’s portfolio or scattering this work among competing agencies is not the answer. I’m especially concerned since this “contract for services” model is the same one the city has turned to to address our housing/mental illness/drug crisis. It’s deeply disturbing that the millions of dollars that citizens voted for to address this growing crisis have not been efficiently disbursed. Clearly the city has not developed a system for working with contractors in a timely manner. Meanwhile people are dying on our streets and with them, our once vibrant downtown is dying. I don’t understand why the council feels now, of all times, is a good time to add to their portfolio of responsibilities. With the city in a shambles this is the wrong time to take on such a complex, multifaceted and specialized portfolio of administrative responsibilities. Add to all this that we are about to transition to a new form of government . In my life as an artist I’ve observed that people with only layman’s knowledge of arts education, art making, art history or art administration often imagine they could do a better job than those who have dedicated their lives to the arts. It may be true that there are problems at RACC that need addressing (I don’t know) but if so the answer is to bring in more expertise, not to scatter administrative duties among agencies and individuals. At the broadest level the unified vision that RACC developed over the last 28 years is what is lacking in far too many government managed arts agencies. On the practical level, the one time I had a public art commission managed by an agent under government contract was a horrible experience . There was a breakdown in communication between the stakeholders, the contractor, and the architect which made my process nearly impossible. Changes were made in the construction drawings after final design and I was not informed until the last minute which meant I had to completely redesign my project on an absurd timeline. At RACC this kind of communication breakdown would never have been allowed to happen as RACC leads artists, architects and stakeholders through the process step by step. Once my contract was awarded the city in question felt my manager’s job was done and I was left without an advocate to navigate all the complexities that a project at this scale entails, and I was the only partner with experience in public art. Following a similarly “efficient” model would inevitably lead to similar problems here in Portland. Properly vetting contractors brought on to manage individual grants administration, public art projects, and arts education programs as they are parceled out will mean each time there is a new scope of work out to bid city administrators will need to go through a hiring process every bit as complex as any other. Those bidding on these projects will also be saddled with the nightmare of multiple proposals a year just to keep their doors open. RACC’s application processes for grants and commissions are fairly standardized which means artists applying for opportunities at RACC can develop efficiencies in their own professional practices. If multiple agencies are administering city arts funding streams there will inevitably be different approaches to selecting artists and institutions for funding. Each institution also has its own mission and agenda while RACC has historically cast a very wide net. These factors add layers of complexity to the professional lives of folks who are often juggling a day job, their art making practice and the funding raising and commission submittals necessary to keep it all going. If the city is looking for a more efficient process this is not the answer. I’m an award winning artist both in my public art practice where I’ve been recognized nationally, and as a studio artist. I collaborate often with performing artists and have a good sense of Portland’s arts ecosystem given my nearly forty year history here. I’d be happy to speak with you at any time about my experiences with RACC, with 4Culture and with other arts commissions around the country. I truly hope the city council has the wisdom to seek out the opinions of the artists, arts administrators and arts institutions who will be most impacted by this decision. Currently Portland has a reputation as a city that punches above its weight in the arts a fact Commissioner Ryan acknowledges in his opinion piece. That reputation was built under RACC’s leadership. I don’t know of anyone in Portland’s art community who thinks this is a good idea. In fact our entire community is angered and dismayed.

Sincerely

Fernanda D’Agostino

Thank you! That was fast.

Thank you, Sally. We’ve updated the listing with the correct location and address.

Three Poets: Brittney Corrigan, Jessica Pierce, Charity Yoro
Presented by Annie Bloom’s Books
6 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 26
Free

Thank you, Leanne. I’m so glad she liked it. He was a very special artist and individual.

Thank you for sharing this, I’m sorry for your loss.

On occasion he could expand this into a dizzying, apparently inexhaustible array of vaguely ecclesiastical formulas. It sounded as if an AI chatbot had been trained on a library full of sermons. David himself said he didn’t know how he did it, but I can only guess it went back to his early ambition to become an actor.

Thanks for calling this to our attention, Joe. This information has been added to the story.

Point taken – I meant to highlight Ligeti as a particularly prominent countercurrent in the nominal avant-garde. To continue the post-WWI political analogy, sort of like Wilson, but without the racism.

I already mentioned Ustvolskya but there were of course many women of that avant-garde like Derbyshire, Laurie Spiegel, Oliveros etc who are also worth mentioning in this conversation of the “listenable avant-garde.”

Absolutely, Jeff. Although one thing I think the “populist” angle can get wrong is that the avant-garde was entirely unconcerned with the audience. They may have had a different audience in mind, for sure, but I don’t think any composer would get far if they were actively hostile towards the listener. Speaking from my position as someone who went to music school there are a lot of those pieces from that Darmstadt avant-garde that I think are brilliant (I partially have Gesang der Junglinge to thank for wanting to become a composer), but there is also a lot of self-indulgent nonsense. Plus a lot of those guys (and yes they were mostly men) who did write out-there music that was fun, dramatic and captivating, like Kagel, Ligeti, Penderecki, Ustvolskya etc. We just have to be honest when someone like, say, Ferneyhough writes a great piece and when he writes something bad.

Eventually some help once again came from America, e.g. minimalism, but the esthetic swing was too radical to last, indeed it was whiplash. One thing remained as oppressive as ever – how the composer made a work was more important than what it sounded like. (Thank you, Richard Taruskin.)

It’s taken 2 or 3 generations for composers (including myself, who hid away for decades) to return en masse to the serious business of providing intelligent pleasure for (hopefully informed) audiences, relatively free of gimmicks, concepts – always death to a sensual art like music – and the dominance of theories and their powerful advocates.

Thanks for asking, Bill. It’s the Cemetery Monument at the Manzanar National Historic Site in California, where a large incarceration camp for Japanese American citizens had been during World War II. The mountain range is the Sierra Nevada. We’ll add this information to the caption.