Oregon Arts Watch: Choose your own adventure: Oboist Ben Price talks about their life at the Curtis Institute of Music
Discussing American and European oboe styles, musical studies, dry halls and the Curtis Sound with the Portland-raised musician.
Ben Price, age 19, is an oboist in their second year of studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where they hold the Anderson and Daria Pew Fellowship at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. Price performs as a member of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and as a soloist and chamber musician in the Curtis Student Recital Series.
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Oregon ArtsWatch: What led you to playing the oboe?
Ben Price: I had a couple of false starts. I played violin for about five minutes when I was three, but I was more interested in the keychain around my violin teacher’s neck than the violin. I started playing piano when I was five, but the practicing aspect of that turned me off initially. Then I really started studying piano when I was eight. I studied piano with oboe for nine or ten years. We all take piano lessons here at Curtis once a week as well. So, I still study piano, but it became clear pretty early on that oboe would become my primary instrument, especially after I heard a recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Scheherazade. That really got to me.
Oregon Arts Watch
By James Bash
Discussing American and European oboe styles, musical studies, dry halls and the Curtis Sound with the Portland-raised musician.
Ben Price, age 19, is an oboist in their second year of studies at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where they hold the Anderson and Daria Pew Fellowship at Philadelphia’s Curtis Institute of Music. Price performs as a member of the Curtis Symphony Orchestra, and as a soloist and chamber musician in the Curtis Student Recital Series.
…
Oregon ArtsWatch: What led you to playing the oboe?
Ben Price: I had a couple of false starts. I played violin for about five minutes when I was three, but I was more interested in the keychain around my violin teacher’s neck than the violin. I started playing piano when I was five, but the practicing aspect of that turned me off initially. Then I really started studying piano when I was eight. I studied piano with oboe for nine or ten years. We all take piano lessons here at Curtis once a week as well. So, I still study piano, but it became clear pretty early on that oboe would become my primary instrument, especially after I heard a recording of the Philadelphia Orchestra playing Scheherazade. That really got to me.
Read more here.
Oregon Arts Watch: Footloose and fancy free: Leonard Slatkin with Oregon Symphony
After a gap of many years, the conductor/composer/author returns to Portland for a concert of Mason Bates, Beethoven, and Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ with Joshua Roman.
Leonard Slatkin is footloose and fancy free. No longer tethered to the music directorship of a particular orchestra, the internationally acclaimed conductor can pick and choose which orchestra he gets to lead. This weekend (October 14-16), it will be the Oregon Symphony in a program that includes works by Beethoven, Elgar, and American composer Mason Bates.
Over a 50-plus-year career, Slatkin has racked up six Grammy awards, 35 Grammy nominations, over 100 recordings, and directed every major orchestra around the world. And the concerts in Portland are not the first time that he has visited the Rose City.
Oregon Arts Watch
By James Bash
After a gap of many years, the conductor/composer/author returns to Portland for a concert of Mason Bates, Beethoven, and Elgar’s ‘Cello Concerto’ with Joshua Roman.
Leonard Slatkin is footloose and fancy free. No longer tethered to the music directorship of a particular orchestra, the internationally acclaimed conductor can pick and choose which orchestra he gets to lead. This weekend (October 14-16), it will be the Oregon Symphony in a program that includes works by Beethoven, Elgar, and American composer Mason Bates.
Over a 50-plus-year career, Slatkin has racked up six Grammy awards, 35 Grammy nominations, over 100 recordings, and directed every major orchestra around the world. And the concerts in Portland are not the first time that he has visited the Rose City.
“My parents were members of the Hollywood String Quartet and used to play a series in Portland,” he said in a Zoom conversation. “That would have been in the ‘50s. I know that I came to Portland with them at least once.”
Read more here.
Oregon Arts Watch: All Classical On the Move
The term “classical music radio” suggests revered, decades-old recordings of music by familiar, long-dead composers. You wouldn’t expect to associate it with 21st century music, Oregon performers and composers, young audiences, or, really, innovation. But while Portland’s All Classical radio’s airwaves and internet streams still abound with recordings of Old Masters, and likely always will, the station has lately been going way beyond its increasingly inaccurate name.
Oregon Arts Watch
By Brett Campbell
Portland’s ambitious, forward-looking classical music radio station is expanding its scope, creating space for live performances, and relocating to downtown Portland.
The term “classical music radio” suggests revered, decades-old recordings of music by familiar, long-dead composers. You wouldn’t expect to associate it with 21st century music, Oregon performers and composers, young audiences, or, really, innovation. But while Portland’s All Classical radio’s airwaves and internet streams still abound with recordings of Old Masters, and likely always will, the station has lately been going way beyond its increasingly inaccurate name.
And now, as its 40th anniversary approaches, the “independent, community-funded radio station and multimedia platform” (to use its own description) is moving even farther afield — literally. It’s crossing the Rubicon, or at least the Willamette, relocating its operations from the Portland Opera building on the east bank to an office tower in the heart of downtown Portland, and creating new, state-of-the-art production studios for broadcast, video, recordings, and live performances of music and theater by Oregon artists. Construction is underway, with the move-in expected in early 2024.
Read more here.