Music with a sense of place
By Gretchen Ammerman
Oregon Coast TODAY
The Siletz Bay Music Festival is known for both a high caliber of performers and a large variety of musical styles. And this year’s schedule of performances, beginning on Saturday, Sept. 4, and ending Sept. 12, will include two productions created to honor Native Americans.
“As an artistic director in the Pacific Northwest I like to connect with the history of the area, morally, spiritually and culturally,” Maestro Yaacov Bergman said. “The name of the music festival is partly who we are — it’s not just a name, it really means something.”
Long in the works, the maestro and board members waited for the right time to include the two works, one a classic and the other a modern composition, into the schedule.
“I have always wanted to do something like this," Bergman said. “But when you do something artistically you can’t fake it.”
At the Lincoln City Cultural Center on Wednesday, Sept. 8, the program, “Songs With and Without Words,” will feature “Two Indian Dances,” written by Charles Sanford Skilton and first published in 1917. According to Robert Kentta, treasurer of the Confederated Tribes of the Siletz Indians, Skilton worked in conjunction with Robert DePoe, a member of the Native American family from which Depoe Bay takes its name.
Performing the piece will be violinists Tosca Opdam and Asi Matathias, Miriam English Ward on viola and Katherine Schultz on cello.
At the B’nai B’rith Camp on Sunday, Sept. 12, the Siletz Bay Music Festival Orchestra will perform the world premiere of “N’Chewana,” a movement from “Celilo Falls: We Were There,” a large-scale multimedia work for chamber orchestra to be premiered in Spring 2022. Written by composer and cellist Nancy Ives in collaboration with Native American artists, it depicts the Columbia River and the salmon that have sustained the people of the Columbia River Basin for millennia, both physically and spiritually.
“I spoke to Ed Edmo about what to call this section/movement, which depicts the salmon and the Columbia River,” Nancy said. “He asked that it be called N’Chewana, which is the Sahaptin word for the Columbia River.”
Ed Edmo is a Shoshone-Bannock poet, playwright, performer, traditional storyteller, tour guide and lecturer on Northwest tribal culture. He has served as a cultural interpreter for the Smithsonian Institution.
A relative of the acclaimed composer Charles Ives, Nancy carries on the tradition of her namesake with modern relevance. Her music has featured in performances by Fear No Music, Portland Cello Project, Oregon Bach Festival and OBF Composers Symposium as well as broadcasts on All Classical Portland. Her projects involve working with indigenous communities to authentically capture, amplify and relay their stories to wider audiences.
• A composition by former Newport resident, the late Ernest Bloch, is on the menu of a new program just added to the festival on Thursday, Sept. 9.
The Doerfler Family Theater, located inside the Newport’s Pacific Maritime Heritage Center, will be filled with beautiful sounds from two newcomers to the festival: lyric soprano Stella Markou and pianist/composer Martin Kennedy. The evening’s fare will also include works by Purcell, Debussy, Mahler, Bolcom, Bernstein and a composition from Kennedy himself.
For more information, go to www.siletzbaymusic.org.