Oregon Coast Double Collaboration Crescendos with “Coastal Vistas”
The Newport Symphony Orchestra presents its concerts in the picturesque town of Newport, located on a scenic stretch of the central Oregon Coast. The Performing Arts Center is situated literally 500 feet from the Pacific, so it’s no surprise that the NSO is referred to as the “Orchestra at the Ocean.”
In 2017 we had the pleasure of collaborating with the NSO and Maestro Adam Flatt for the first time on a concert program exploring Iceland and the U.S. National Parks in both music and imagery. Now, two years later, we’re coming back to the Oregon Coast for a special follow-up collaboration that brings the focus entirely onto Newport, Lincoln County, and the Pacific Northwest region.
Our September 21 & 22 double concert series is centered around our community-based project called Coastal Vistas. For the project, the orchestra made a public call for photo submissions for which local amateur, professional, and youth photographers submitted images portraying the people, activities, and of course the vistas that make the area such a breathtakingly beautiful place to live. Following the May 2019 submission deadline, 700 images had rolled in.
Adding another dimension to this project, a selection of images comes from an initiative to instruct local youth in basic photography skills and to have them make images specifically about their lives and surroundings in Lincoln County. Early on, a partnership developed between the local 4H chapter, the University of Oregon–Corvallis extension, and Yaquina Bay Art Association Photographers to facilitate, teach and encourage young people in the community to participate in the project. Two teaching seminars and field trips were organized to collect images from the participating young people. Finally, the Lincoln County Historical Society made their 1,400-image archive available to allow us to create historical parallels to the modern subjects submitted by local photographers.
After receiving all of the photo submissions, Westwater Arts multimedia artist Nicholas Bardonnay began the process of curating the material and choreographing final selections by 33 local photographers to the previously chosen musical work, Copland’s Our Town. The variations in the music present the opportunity to showcase the Newport area and its people in a series of visual-musical vignettes.
The program will continue celebrating the coastal Pacific Northwest with a piece from our repertoire called Pacifica. Nicholas photographed Pacifica during the atmospheric winter months primarily around Olympic National Park and the Columbia River delta. The piece is a meditation on the special qualities of the landscape, from the damp forest floor to aerial views of the coastline and many perspectives in between. For this special rendition of Pacifica, the imagery is choreographed to Liadov’s The Enchanted Lake, a mesmerizing yet rarely heard work.
Also on the program are Schuller’s Music for a Celebration and Rimsky-Korsakov’s Scheherazade.
(Surfer image submitted by Jeff Cheever. Lighthouse & stars image submitted by Arjen Sundman. Early surfers at Agate Beach image submitted by Lincoln County Historical Society. Seal image submitted by Carl Baker. Newport aerial submitted by Christian Flores Munoz.)
