Music News - Criticism: April 2008 Archives

Eugene Symphony horn players

Festival season is here early this year. I don't know what it is about festivals, but as the PR person for the Eugene Symphony said to me, "Eugene's a festvial town." Perhaps she was referring to the Helmuth Rilling-headed Oregon Bach Festival, which has probably accustomed Willamette Valley-ites to lectures and hoopla surrounding music. Perhaps she meant that our summer weather attracts people from more humid parts of the country. Whatever she meant, we're through our first festival and moving hurriedly toward the Track and Field Olympic Trials, which happens to coincide with the Bachfest. (Yikes.)

I do know that the Symphony created a long-range plan over the summer of 2007 and announced several resulting events at the beginning of the 07-08 season. One of the plans -- a plan immensely popular among patrons but not ... quite ... worked out yet according to the exec director, to whom I spoke a week or two ago -- calls for summer concerts in the park. (I wrote about the Symphony's announcements of all of this here.)

In any case, last week, there was much festival activity in Eugene. And I had enough Maurice Ravel to last another, oh, 20 years or so.