Festival memories, and summertime preparations

Wow! Summer is almost over and all of us here at Classical Up Close hope you’ve had a good one. Have you been able to take in some classical music? We hope so! Leave us a comment and let us know.

August is generally a quiet time for music, a quiet pause before the excitement of a new season for many cultural groups. Oregon Symphony musicians are returning from festivals out of town and picking up the music for the first few concerts, starting with one at the Zoo on Saturday, September 1st. It seems like a good time to reflect on our last festival of Classical Up Close free chamber music concerts, our sixth season. Wow! Six years of sharing music our musicians are passionate about and getting to know you up close, where you live, work and play! 

We have some numbers to share from 2018’s Classical Up Close festival: 

Six full-length evening concerts, six daytime blitzes, four concerts for kids, and one live radio broadcast from the studio of All Classical Portland FM, our media sponsor.

53 Oregon Symphony musicians and 10 guest musicians performed for 2,400 of you.

??? (who knows how many) memories! You can relive them in dozens of photos in our 2018 photo gallery: http://www.classicalupclose.org/photos-2018.html ​

Looking ahead: 

We’re working on a new logo, so look forward to a new t-shirt design. We love seeing you in our t-shirts! And we'll have a new look to our website soon.

We continue to be on the lookout for venues that enable us to reach a large swath of the metropolitan area. We value having the ability to get to know people who already love classical music while at the same, providing opportunities for those who haven’t been exposed to it or have found it hard to access. The surveys we collect at concerts — 402 of you filled them out, thank you! —  indicate that we are achieving both of these goals, and that thrills us. If you have an idea for a venue please send us a quick email and let us know about it.

Stay tuned for the announcement of our NEW FALL SERIES! Spring will be here before you know it, and we look forward to seeing you at Classical Up Close 2019.