There will be a line around the Bloch
at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center this weekend
Musician, composer, conductor, philosopher, photographer. A man also known during his life as a successful mushroom hunter with a penchant for finding and polishing agates.
Ernest Bloch, who moved to Agate Beach in 1941 with his wife Marguerite and passed away in 1959, is one of the area’s favorite former residents.
The Lincoln County Historical Society, in collaboration with the Ernest Bloch Legacy Project, will honor the life and times of this creative spirit with the multi-media show, “The Man from Agate Beach: The Legacy of Ernest Bloch” at the Pacific Maritime Heritage Center this Friday, July 21 and Saturday, July 22.
British Bloch expert Dr. Alexander Knapp will present two lectures: “Musical Style in Bloch’s ‘Agate Beach’ Works" on Friday and “The Piano Music of Ernest Bloch” on Saturday.
The program will also unveil the next in a long series of videos produced by the the historical society’s “Ebb and Flow Series – The Ernest Bloch Legacy.” Also featured will be a video created by Lincoln County Commissioner, Casey Miller, featuring the voice of David Ogden Stiers.
Knapp is a freelance musicologist, ethnomusicologist, lecturer, consultant, teacher, composer and pianist. Since the late 1960s he has researched, published and lectured extensively about Jewish music, especially the life and works of Bloch, in the United Kingdom, the US, parts of Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Asia. He contributed substantially to the 2016 volume “Ernest Bloch Studies” that he co-edited for Cambridge University Press. Among numerous other articles, he has written entries on aspects of Jewish art music for The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians. He organized and directed the First International Ernest Bloch Conference in Cambridge in 2007 and lectured at the First Beijing International Ernest Bloch Conference in 2010.
Also helping to honor the late composer will be Professor Emeritus Eric Johnson, who wrote “Ernest Bloch: A Composer’s Vision” in 1972 for Aperture Magazine on his discovery, printing and research of Bloch’s photography. People of interest in the history of Bloch as a photographer include Alfred Stieglitz, who in 1922 was very pleased that Bloch saw music in his photographs of clouds and Ansel Adams, who made it possible for the Ernest Bloch photo collection to be archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona.
Joining Knapp and Johnson for a Q&A session will be Dr. Frank Geltner of the Ernest Bloch Legacy Project; Greg Steinke, founder of the 1990 to 2005 Ernest Bloch Music Festival; and Bloch’s great-granddaughter, Suzanne Bloch Boyer.
In 1976, the Governor of Oregon, accompanied by Bloch’s three children, dedicated the Ernest Bloch Memorial in a wayside in Agate Beach near the home in which the Bloch’s lived. Later, in 2009, the Newport City Council dedicated Ernest Bloch Place at 49th Street. In 2017, the State of Oregon named the wayside near the Bloch home the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside and in 2018 Ernest Bloch Place was expanded and dedicated along with the Ernest Bloch Memorial Wayside. Ernest Bloch Place now features a monument, five benches, an interpretive sign and a marker.
Bloch moved to the US in 1916 from Geneva, Switzerland. In the summer of 1941, he found himself stranded in Agate Beach as he was returning from teaching music theory at UC Berkeley. He wandered the area and came upon a house for sale on a bluff overlooking the ocean.
The gap between 1916 and 1941 included time at New York’s Mannes School of Music, the London Chamber Orchestra, the Cleveland Institute of Music, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music and the London, Boston, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Baltimore and BBC symphony orchestras.
Giants of the 20th century that appear in Bloch’s history include Albert Einstein, Claude Debussy, Diego Rivera, Frida Kahlo and Igor Stravinsky.
The show will accompany a long term exhibition, “Composition of Senses: Ernest Bloch in Agate Beach” featured in the museum gallery through Nov. 12.
The exhibition includes Bloch’s photography, the Renaissance Christ that hung in the Bloch home and video footage created by Johnson, pairing Bloch’s music to his photography.
During the hour preceding each of the Friday and Saturday programs, Johnson will be in the gallery and available for one-on-one conversation.
The Pacific Maritime Heritage Center is located at 333 SE Bay Boulevard in Newport. The Friday program is from 4 to 7 pm and the Saturday program is from 1 to 4 pm. Admission fees will be waived, though donations are appreciated. For more information, go to oregoncoasthistory.org or call 541-265-7509.