PDX Vivaldi

If you’re feeling charitable you’d call my musical tastes eclectic; my favorite iTunes playlist includes BB King, Rachmaninoff, Cheap Trick, Sapna Awasti, Uriah Heep, Debussy, the immortal Ella, FrouFrou and Mr. Chocolate Voice himself, Joao Gilberto.

But for just plain daggone gorgeously get-lost-in-it wonderful, I go for baroque (sorry, couldn’t resist). And one of the most beautiful pieces of baroque music in existence, Vivaldi’s Four Seasons violin concerto, will be performed by the Portland Baroque Orchestra next weekend. I talked about PBO awhile back, and the amazing concert they did with incredible contratenor Matthew White.

PBO is an odd mix: Good mastery of the baroque form, their use of period instrumentation is an education, and they make beautiful music. They’re also pure Portland, which is pretty eclectic itself, and so their concerts are held in a beautiful old church and refreshingly (or maybe disconcertingly) informal.

In concert they follow what I call “PDX Black Tie,” shorthand for “wear the GOOD jeans and put some socks on with those sandals.” There’s a lot more audience interaction than I’ve seen at most concerts, and the performers are liable to crack up at intermissions. Everybody seems to have showed up just to have a good time with music they love, which makes PBO concerts a lot of fun.

If you don’t know Four Seasons…well, you really do, parts of it, anyway. It’s excerpted all the time in commercials and movies when the director wants to set an atmosphere of wealth and culture (and snobbery). Head over to iTunes (or to the PBO site) and listen to a couple of fragments , and you’ll recognize it soon enough.

Or buy the PBO CD; they’re recording this concert and will be selling the CDs in March.

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