fEARnoMUSIC and Sakura Festival

Host/producer Dmae Roberts features the Portland premiere of The Juliet Lettersby fEARnoMUSIC, a 21st century classical ensemble.  Dmae talks with three ensemble members: violinist Paloma Griffin, singer Holcombe Waller, and cellist Nancy Ives. We'll hear music from the group and clips from The Juliet Letters. We'll also hear about their Young Composers Project and future events. And later in the show, Dmae takes us to the Sakura Festival.

Photo credit: Alica Rose

fEARnoMUSIC presents the Portland premiere of  The Juliet Letters in collaboration with four talented Portland singers: Leah Yorkston, Holcombe Waller, Stephen Marc Beaudoin, and Angela Niederloh. The Juliet Letters is a song cycle Elvis Costello developed with the Brodsky String Quartet, a British quartet that has worked with Bjork, Paul McCartney and other pop musicians in addition to performing standard classical quartets.  The cycle is based on imaginary correspondence between a Veronese academic and people who wrote letters to Shakespeare's most famous heroine, Juliet Capulet. In “The Juliet Letters,” Costello and the members of the quartet crafted a series of dramatic songs and ballads, in which characters of varying ages and degrees of sanity tell stories of love, death, and betrayal, based on the letters.  Shakespeare’s dramatic heroine serves as a metaphor for the disillusionment that they all experience in some way or another.

The performance takes place Tuesday, April 12, 8pm, at the Aladdin Theater, 3017 SE Milwaukee Avenue, Portland. You can purchase tickets fromTicketmaster or the Aladdin Theater.

Later in the show, Dmae brings us sounds from the first annual Sakura (Cherry Blossom) Festival. This year the event is benefiting disaster relief in Japan. Click here to learn more and hear the piece by itself.

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