Music Northwest

Mission

The mission of Music Northwest is to bring diverse audiences and musicians together to learn and experience different musical cultures. Music Northwest produces an annual professional-level Concert Series as well as Chamber Music Camps for youth and adults. Free tickets are given to students, ages 26 and under. Need-based financial aid is available for the Camps. One of our primary goals is to expand cultural understanding through the experience of different genres of music from different cultures. 

We attract a diverse population of listeners and participants through cross-genre-concerts (e.g. Schubert Songs and African-American Spirituals), and targeting low-income and immigrant participants for our Chamber Music Camps.

Description

Concert Series: In our Concert Series, we specifically program composers and professional-level performers of different ethnicities in cross-genre concerts. Past concerts have included "Beethoven Duo Sonatas for Violin and Piano," with members of the Seattle Symphony and outstanding regional orchestras; "Gypsy Music" from Eastern Europe with guests artists from St. Petersburg; "J.S. Bach: Genius of the Keyboard" featuring three historic keyboard instruments; "Chopin: the Poet of the Piano" with pianists Natalya Ageyeva and Jane Harty; and "Degenerate Music" by Jewish composers banned by the 3rd Reich as well as Argentinian tango and cowboy music. We are eclectic, and proudly so.

New Music: Music Northwest has also commissioned and premiered brilliant new works by Northwest and American composers:

"Box ek T'ho" for piano, Bern Herbolsheimer

"Moon Whispers, Cloud Shimmers" for piano, Janice Giteck

"Nunataks" for piano, John Luther Adams

and most recently

"Three Poems by Phyillis Wheatley" for voice and piano by Clement Reid, 2021

"Invocation" for voice, cello, and piano by Connor Chee, with text by Ojibwe poet Jane Schoolcraft, 2023

"To the Invisible Listener" for voice, cello and piano by Jacob Beranek, with newly-published poems inspired by Soren Kierkegaard, 2024  

Music Education for Youth and Adults: Our vision is that working in small chamber ensembles fosters the ability to work together as equal participants to create something beautiful. This is a contrast to both solo and orchestral performance which requires either solitary work or following the direction of a leader. The skill of collaboration is developed to a high degree, an invaluable ability that can be applied to other areas of work and social interaction. We target public school music programs with free-lunch students to recruit them for our Camp; financial aid is available. Our highly-skilled artist-teachers are also recruited to try to offer a balance of ethnicities and backgrounds working as a team in our Camps. Previous Chamber Music Camps have produced public recitals including composers from Vivaldi to Piazzolla, Beethoven to Shostakovich, and newly-composed American music commissioned by the Camp participants and Music Northwest.