How can Tamara Stefanovich’s Portland visit be only two more newsletters away? Getting to delve deeper into her program over the last few weeks, we think her departure from the predominantly Romantic repertory we’ve been hearing in the past few recitals is as refreshing as the crisp, sunny days we’re been experiencing here in Portland.

In our device-centered, easy-fix, fast-forward world, I often worry that we’re increasingly losing touch with the full experience of making something new from scratch. I’m not only talking about microwave meals and fast fashion, I’m referring to our entire outlook on everything from functional household objects like chairs, beds, and rugs to creative endeavors like books, toys, paintings and songs. If we can 3-D print everything from gadgets to sculptures, and my 8-year-old can produce a decent-looking bake-sale flyer with a few deft keyboard strokes in Canva, my concern is that we’re losing perspective on the process involved in making something, only focusing on the product. Click, click, click, done! Wasn’t that a little bit too easy!?

It’s our first official newsletter for 2026 and we couldn’t have started the year on a higher note! Having the utterly charming and supremely skilled Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy at Lincoln Hall this past Sunday felt more celebratory, life-affirming, and hopeful to us than any ball drop or cork pop, and confirmed, once again, that a world with pianos in it is a world we want to live in!

November and December are a bit of a doozy, no matter what your age, occupation or cultural affiliation. Whether it’s celebrating, decorating, commemorating or all of the above, something is constantly nipping at your heels, with the added stress of time running out before the new calendar year!

If you’ve been baking cookies (or basting turkeys, or rolling out pie crusts) over the past weeks, I’m sure you’d understand why I chuckled when I read these lines in my book club’s current pick:

Yes, just like that the transition has happened! Oranges, yellows, browns and everything pumpkin are out, wintery reds and greens, twinkly lights and candy stripes are in, and the season of crafting and cooking has officially begun. In this sense, the world hasn’t changed all that much in the last 200 years. Yes, we now have a festive Starbucks menu and Advent calendars with everything from cheese to Keurig cups behind their little doors, but indoor entertainment, friendship and coziness are still the staples of the season. So it was for Schubert, so it is for us!

If our gossipy headline made you open this email, consider yourself seen and understood! As far as iconic romances go, the love affair between the celebrated novelist, memoirist and journalist Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin de Francueil, more commonly known by her pen name, George Sand, and the pianist-composer Frédéric Chopin is the stuff of legend. Right up there with Antony and Cleopatra, Victoria and Albert, Taylor and Travis (…), the consumptive and sickly Frédéric’s almost decade-long entanglement with the dashing, cross-dressing intellectual still fascinates fans and scholars to this day, resulting in a cornucopia of fictional mythologizing and long trails of historical research.

Dear friends of PPI,

I’m writing to you from Brussels, Belgium, where I’ve just started a new Beethoven odyssey – the full sonata cycle over two seasons! It’s a tremendous joy to return to this music, and being at the Flagey Building is a treat in itself. (It’s a stunning Art Deco building, originally functioning as the radio broadcasting house – evidently designed with acoustics in mind, and widely considered a central cultural hub.) This being Belgium, food is never far either, with three restaurants nestled in the building itself, from the wonderfully lively Café Belga – great for a pre-concert sandwich or cake! – to the more sophisticated (that is, grown-up!) Les Variétés and Barracuda.

(Yes, we are still celebrating that Eric Lu won the Chopin Competition and looking forward to his sold-out performance for PPI on November 16th!) 

If there’s one thing about human culture that I find absolutely fascinating, it’s our paradoxical relationship with competition.  On the one hand, we cannot overstress the importance of everyone being a winner (there’s no “I” in “team”!) on the other, our quest for individual excellence and relentless one-upping has never been more pronounced. Whether in business, technology, sports or even innocent hobbies (competitive knitting, anyone?), we’ve thoroughly ingrained the belief that striving for individual greatness is what ultimately proves our human worth.

(According to AI, that’s how one would say “Winner, winner, chicken dinner!” in Polish. I’m not sure that’s correct, but words are failing me to express my giddy elation, and incorrect Polish is as good as gobbledygook English in cases of flabbergasted speechlessness, I’m sure.)

Let’s reflect together for a moment about what a great musical fall it has been already. In exactly one month, we’ll be halfway into our season when we welcome Eric Lu to Portland and before we know it, it will be 2026 and we’ll start counting down to summer again! That is why today, instead of immediately jumping into “what’s next”-mode, we want to take a moment to breathe, sit back and celebrate the concerts we just wrapped up. (We hope you don’t blame us for wanting to cue Elton John’s I’m still standing here – two concerts over just nine days is a rather heavy load for a small team, but we think we’ve crushed it!)

Is it just me, or is one of the marks of middle age to suddenly possess the ability to turn every prospectively happy event into reason for anxious rumination? “Let’s go on a trip over winter break!” quickly turns into a concerned mental tallying of available leave days (not to mention pangs of guilt about the kids’ worryingly meagre college fund.) “Why not throw a big birthday party?” instantly provokes palpitations, linked not only to the implied stress of hosting, but also myriad social conundrums (if we invite so-and-so, we also have to include so-and-so …) Even things as simple as going out to a restaurant with friends, getting a new book group together or finding a movie to watch with my husband on a Friday night (all fun and relaxing ideas, right?) have inherent gordian knot potential: The restaurant inevitably has to please vegans and carnivores; the Doodle poll between working moms lands on a Sunday afternoon sometime mid-2027; by the time we’ve watched seventeen previews, one of us is usually asleep.

Like doting parents with a large brood of children, we at PPI take great pride and joy in each and every one of our artists. So many unique perspectives, personalities and predilections, so much endless variety within the scope of pianistic excellence. While we truly hold a special place in our hearts for each and every pianist we host and don’t play favorites, we cannot help but feel that profound surge of “look at our first baby walking!”-pride when our curator takes the stage. The individual crafting the season is, after all, the creative force behind the narrative arc and artistic vision of all the individual recitals.

There are many magical elements from the 1964 Disney film Mary Poppins that I wish could have morphed into my adult reality. The ability to clean up with the click of my fingers, for example. Also, the freedom of escaping drab routine by jumping into a beautiful chalk drawing on the sidewalk. These are extreme feats of fantasy, though, and even as a child, I could sense that demanding that kind of magic from the universe may be pushing the limits.

While the constant craving for digital dopamine is taking over our world (see this excellent recent opinion piece in the NYTimes) and many performing arts organizations are pulling out every possible stop to meet the ever-growing demand for personalized, digitally augmented and immersive experiences, we’ve been spending a lot of time at the PPI office, thinking about what value and significance a nineteenth-century performance model (the solo piano recital as we know it today was essentially “invented” by Liszt in the 1800s and never revised) still has to offer in today’s harried, hurried society.

If you were in Lincoln Hall this past Sunday and were there to feel the communal wave of glee by the time Evren Ozel played his encore, you’ll know exactly what I mean: Listening to a recording at home while you’re cooking, popping in your AirPods while working out, or tuning in to your favorite radio station on your morning commute is simply not the same kind of musical experience as sitting in a hall surrounded by other people, watching a one-off event unfold in real time.

Some may call it confirmation bias; I call it serendipity: that wonderful influx of somehow related ideas and phenomena that keep popping up once one’s thoughts board a certain train. Planning a trip to Italy? Why, suddenly all the wines in Fred Meyer seem Italian. Thinking about buying a kitten? Bet you’re seeing cute fur-balls everywhere. Recently binge-watched a Scandinavian family drama on Netflix? Just look at all the other subtitled series that now get suggested! (Wait … that’s an algorithm, not serendipity!)

Wouldn’t it be deliciously entertaining if we could visually portray creative energy as scoops of ice-cream? Doing a stick-figure doodle equals one scoop plain vanilla. Writing a rhyming quatrain gets you a double scoop with sprinkles. Singing your own song with piano accompaniment … that’s a mint chocolate chip in a waffle cone, thank you very much.

A week or so ago, I had a fabulously un-classical experience, sitting in the second row at a live performance of the sensational Cuban ensemble, the Buena Vista Orchestra. What struck me (even more than their beaming keyboard player, Andy Abad Acosta, opening with Chopin’s Minute Waltz) was the fact that, despite their expressive faces, their fluid moves and their evocative melodies, something was lost on me due to the fact that I didn’t understand the Spanish lyrics of any of the songs. (Not just lost on me, but lost on the entire audience, who had a decidedly hard time cooperating when the lead singer kept urging the crowd to sing más fuerte to lyrics they could only vaguely mumble.) Sure, you’d have to be living under a rock if, as a modern American, you’re unable to catch the odd “amigo”, “corazon”, “por que” and “amor” – but how does one fully grasp the storytelling aspect of vocal music without understanding the words? The music, alone, is simply not enough.