We’ve got a special show for you this week: it’s the Wonder homage to fiction. With the Oregon Book Awards coming up on April 13, we spend the hour with the five finalists for the Ken Kesey Award for Fiction. The group is made up of three debut novelists, two poets, and one past winner of the fiction prize. We've talked with three of them before, and we brought the other two into the studio to round out the cohort. 1:20 - Willy Vlautin is as skilled and prolific a polyglot as they come. His band...
Mar 27, 2015•51 min
Shared workspace is all the rage with start-ups, artisans, and freelancers these days, but does it work for arts nonprofits? Artists Repertory Theatre is finding out. It has invited eight other theater-related organizations to cozy up in an experiment in cohabitation. They're calling it the Artshub, and they're hoping it might prove a model for future nonprofits. On any given day, there're plays opening, rehearsals rehearsing, scene shop saws buzzing, students singing, and pigeons making googly ...
Mar 21, 2015•23 min
A few minutes with one of Oregon's best-known playwrights, Andrea Stolowitz. (photo credit: Sabine Samiee)
Mar 21, 2015•22 min
Touring around Artist Rep's ArtsHub, one of our favorite moments was hanging out with prop master Natalie Heikkinen
Mar 20, 2015•6 min
This week, we take you behind-the-scenes at one of the city's most dynamic theaters, Artists Repertory Theatre, with a show recorded in front of a live audience on the Alder Stage. The longest-running company in town has hit a creative artery. Under the artistic direction of Dámaso Rodriguez, the theater has both expanded its resident artist company from five people to more than 20 and opened its doors to eight other performing organizations, from Profile Theatre and Hand2Mouth to Portland Revel...
Mar 20, 2015•52 min
Three actors talk about facing down financial difficulty. Also, our guest curator Dámaso Rodriguez discusses the system of support Artists Rep is creating with its Resident Artists company.
Mar 20, 2015•10 min
Last night's taping at Artists Rep Theatre was a blast. And the icing on the cake? The musical stylings of Bourbon Jockey. The band includes Matthew Jones, managing director of Profile Theatre, and Ross McKeen, managing director of Oregon Childrens Theatre. They surprised us during sound check with a musical tribute.
Mar 20, 2015•5 min
The artistic director of Artists Repertory Theatre has big ideas about the role theater can play in the community. He's also developed vanguard new ways for creating community within his theater. Take a listen, get acquainted, then tune in Saturday as Damaso takes our show for a spin.
Mar 17, 2015•7 min
Everything looks different this week somehow — bigger, brighter, more vivid. Is it us? A new projector? A bird? A plane? Or is it the Wonder? Come hear what we have for you: 1:13 - Oregonian reporter Bryan Denson tells us about a breaking art forgery caper. 5:34 - The Hollywood Theatre raises the curtain on its new 70mm projection system with "2001: A Space Odyssey." We hear about the treasure hunt behind tracking down the now defunct technology. Well, almost defunct: the Hollywood might just de...
Mar 13, 2015•53 min
Whether you’ve seen Stanley Kubrick’s sci-fi epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” or not, you know its cultural traces. There’s the opening music (actually a work by Richard Strauss). There’s the monotone, disembodied voice of Hal: “I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.” But chances are you haven’t seen and heard it the way it was supposed to screen: in the exceptionally crisp, immersive and gargantuan 70 millimeter format. The film has all but vanished since the early ‘90s. But after a countrywi...
Mar 13, 2015•9 min
Photographer Motoya Nakamura's new show is Sakura Sakura. Here's a link if you'd like to see them in person. http://www.oregonnikkei.org/exhibits.htm#exhibit
Mar 13, 2015•2 min
Mar 07, 2015•5 min
Novelist Geronimo Johnson has been teaching for years - at Iowa, OSU Cascades, and elsewhere. His new satirical novel sends up academia, racial politics, and more.
Mar 07, 2015•5 min
The flowers are abloom, and so are the arts. Get out, get out, while the sun's still shining, and turn up the volume with these stories: 1:09 - Sonic Youth bassist, vocalist and co-founder Kim Gordon has a new memoir about being on the front lines of rock called "Girl in a Band." We'll talk to fans about Gordon's pervasive legacy. 7:28 - Ursula K Le Guin talks about where ideas come from as part of Literary Arts Archives Project. 13:00 - A venerated slash metal guitarist from Japan strays into u...
Mar 07, 2015•50 min
New Governor? Legislative session in progress? A few quick hits on what's happening with arts and culture policy in Salem.
Feb 27, 2015•3 min
Verona Studio's new production, and its connection with Oregon Senator Ron Wyden's late father.
Feb 27, 2015•5 min
A few minutes with the executive director of the Oregon Arts Commission.
Feb 27, 2015•5 min
00:41 Governor Kate Brown on arts? 03:12 "Blond Poison" 08:30 Edwidge Danticat from Portland Arts and Lectures 16:24 Requiem for a Carpet: Rendered + 99% Invisible 29:37 opbmusic's Stagepass with Summer Cannibals. 32:11 Timmy Failure: Mistakes Were Made. 38:24 Kareem Abdul-Jabar's new book 39:53 Billy Childs tribute to Laura Nyro. 47:40 Kevin Irving of Oregon Ballet Theatre. 49:07 DeConnick & Fraction to develop TV shows
Feb 27, 2015•53 min
The celebrated artist behind the Wildwood books and The Decemberists’s album covers releases her first children’s book.
Feb 25, 2015•8 min
Curator/artist Kristan Kennedy, gallerist Elizabeth Leach, and collector Sarah Miller Meigs share perspectives on Portland Art Museum's search for a new curator of Modern and Contemporary Art. Also, PAM director Brian Ferriso on the search status.
Feb 21, 2015•6 min
Oscar previews Melissa Lowery's new doc"Black Girl In Suburbia" Oregon Art Beat tracks down Bibi McGill. Survey:attitudes toward arts and culture. Illustrator Carson Ellis PAM's curatorial search Saxophonist Hailey Niswanger
Feb 20, 2015•53 min
In talking with this week's guest curator, Matt Fleeger, we got to thinking about the pervasive influence of jazz on other genres. Sometimes it manifests in unexpected ways. Matt suggested we get in touch with record producer Tucker Martine. He's worked with dozens of indie pop icons. Through his work with guitarist Bill Frisell and his own music, Martine also shows a progressive jazz sensibility. We caught up with him at his Portland studio, Flora.
Feb 15, 2015•9 min
When Matt Fleeger agreed to be our guest curator this week, we knew we'd struck gold. He's one of our favorite guys around the building. As program director of our sister station, KMHD Jazz Radio, he oversees what goes on air and works with dozens of volunteer hosts to keep operations bouncing along. His sensibility brings together respect for straight-ahead jazz classics with huge enthusiasm for forward-thinking sounds — especially those originating in the Portland scene. Matt doesn't brag abou...
Feb 14, 2015•10 min
This week, our guest curator, Matt Fleeger got us thinking about the tensions between jazz's glorious history and its relentless drive toward the great new sounds. Tension is good, in a creative sense, right? But you can't help but notice how these dyad has driven some of the most ferocious conversations about the nature of jazz, and the rightful path for the American art form. Witness the fury over Stanley Crouch and James Mtume's epic head-to-head about Miles Davis' electric period, provided h...
Feb 14, 2015•13 min
This week: it's Confessions of the Reluctant Jazz Guy. Our pal Matt Fleeger of KMHD Jazz Radio turns us on to some new artists and talks about how jazz as a meta-genre — a way to better understand many forms of music. 11:10 - We’ll talk about jazz past, present and future with bassist Chuck Israels, drummer Chris Brown and drummer Tim DuRoche. 24:40 - Matt shares some of the bands he's most excited about right now, including Coco Columbia and Grammies. 30:30 - Record producer Tucker Martine talk...
Feb 14, 2015•43 min
An arresting new show opened at Augen Gallery this week. Artist Dianne Kronberg's "The Madonna Comix" is a series of prints inspired by 11 poems with titles like "Madonna of the Cigarettes," "Madonna of the Suitcase," and "The Madonna Bomb." Featuring images of a naked pregnant dancer in dynamic poses or found images of things like pelicans and bomb vests, the prints look like frames from a weathered old graphic novel that were printed over erased backgrounds of Little Lulu cartoons, although in...
Feb 06, 2015•5 min
This week, works in translation, from printmakers to Rossini. Things get flipped on their head with surprising results.... 1:04 - The Pander Brothers talk to Oregon Art Beat about their eye-popping visual style, and crossing genres to follow the action. 5:30 - opbmusic brings us music and conversation with husband-and-wife indie pop duo Tennis. 8:40 - Documentary filmmaker Brian Lindstrom's new film, “Mothering Inside,” follows women incarcerated at Coffee Creek Correctional Facility in Wilsonvi...
Feb 06, 2015•34 min
Portland Opera is re-imagining Rossini’s famous comedy “The Barber of Seville” as a bi-lingual play for the company’s Opera To Go program, which performs dozens of shows around Oregon and Southwest Washington, mostly for schoolkids. In director Kristine McIntyre's adaptation, there are still two young lovers, Almaviva and Rosina. There’s Bartolo, Rosina’s cranky old guardian, and one of the most famous characters in opera: wiseguy manservant-turned-barber Figaro. But McIntyre condensed a lot of ...
Feb 06, 2015•6 min
A new stream of revenue is opening up in Central Oregon. Arts and culture groups are being encouraged to apply if they have projects that will draw overnight visitors. The Bend Cultural Tourism Fund will award grants May 4th.
Jan 30, 2015•2 min
PNCA's new building, restored, renovated, and re-imagined by Brad Cloepfil and Allied Works. We get a tour and talk with Cloepfil and Tom Manley about what the rebirth of this historic building means for PNCA and for Portland.
Jan 30, 2015•12 min
