Dear friends of PPI

If you are familiar with the beast called “Spring Fundraiser” and came to our “Back to the Keys” party last Sunday, I think you’d agree that PPI’s take on benefit events is the most fun, by far! What a fabulous time we had at Piano Beach! 

Naturally, that’s all because of you, because all of the 127 guests who attended on Sunday felt like loyal and fun-loving friends, and your collective cheer and enthusiasm for PPI were fizzing in the colorful cocktails and radiating from the vivid outfits and lovely leis. From Darrell Grant’s rollicking rhythms to your generous paddle raises; from piano student Lucy Joo’s cheeky take on “Wade in the Water” to the guest appearance of Beach Guy (impish alter ego of ED Bill Crane) – the merrymaking was matchless, and once again we can report with gratitude that our annual fund is standing strong. This means more music for yet another season to come, and, that, with renewed fervor, we can keep making the metropolitan area safe for the piano! 

Not too long ago, I was paging through a photo album (a real, physical one from back in the day – quaint, I know!) with my daughters, when one pointed to the shiny rectangular object in my hand and quipped: “Man, that’s a weird phone.” 

Yes, dear, the Samsung L210 (released in 2008) was then considered a pretty decent budget-friendly ultra-compact camera (“style slimmed to perfection”) and it captured our adventures beautifully. But no, I couldn’t call anyone on it. Also, fast forward two decades, and I no longer know where in the household stack of defunct gadgets it is, how I’ll ever charge it, should I find it, or even download the pictures from the data card onto my current laptop, which has no USB port. Technology changes so fast these days, that a smartphone typically only lasts two to four years, and the recommended replacement point for a laptop is five years for optimal productivity.

The PPI family has always been tremendously generous, and over the past 48 seasons, this open-handed attitude has led to many truly great things. From regularly finding fine lodgings for our artists in the homes of loyal patrons, having the means and volunteer-power to elevate our Sunday afternoon gatherings with concessions and beautiful flowers on stage, to uplifting scores of teachers and students through our grant-funded Tholen program, we are no strangers to extraordinary philanthropy. Despite already existing on this high plane of human goodness, this past week’s experiences with Filippo Gorini felt akin to finding Narnia at the back of professor Kirke’s wardrobe, or Diagon Alley with Harry Potter. Thanks to your generosity – and his! – we’ve been privileged to perform magic, or, if you dislike fluffy metaphysical terms, bringing the most amazing goodness to seemingly impossible places. 

Being a professional musician has involved a huge amount of travel since the beginning of time – whether we’re talking court musicians in ancient Egypt and Mesopotamia, Roman traveling entertainers, medieval troubadours or the traveling virtuosi of the Renaissance.  Sure, there’s a vast difference between the estimated 10 to 15 mile journey from the Biblical David’s childhood home to the court of King Saul (where young David was purportedly summoned to play the lyre) and the 63,000-odd miles Taylor Swift covered during the Eras Tour, but the bottom line is that musical growth and performance opportunity often means leaving the comfort of one’s home. For some, this was (and still is) thrilling (Mozart famously remarked that “without travel, at least for people from the arts and sciences, one is a miserable creature!”). For others, it’s nothing more than a necessary evil. As Robert Schumann wrote to a friend about a tour of Russia in 1844: “I had to promise the journey to St. Petersburg to Clara in the most solemn manner, else she said she would go alone. Pardon me if I forebear to tell how unwilling I am to leave my quiet home. I never think of it without the utmost sorrow …” 

This week’s newsletter comes from a place of strange complexity. I’m sure I’m not alone in saying that the world right now feels particularly weird (and not in the nice “Portland weird” way). And yet. We’re on the road with Filippo Gorini, and if one thing stands out to me with the luminosity of the Luxor lamp, it’s that sincere and genuine musicianship can connect, uplift and embolden us, no matter the circumstance. It always has – and with artists like ours continuing to work in the world, it always will!

Pick your favorite iteration of our acronym, and whether you land on Peace, Puppies and Ice-creams, Pause, Passion and Imagination or Perfect Presentation of an Italian, the takeaway from today’s communication should be: Life is better with PPI. This is where happiness is served, one recital at a time. This is where you hit the “pause” button and escape the world.

Dear friends of PPI, 

If the return of “normal Portland weather” earlier this week may have dampened your mood, let the blazing sunshine and blue skies this morning confirm that sad and soggy conditions are always temporary.

At the PPI office (in the words of the ever-quotable Bill Crane) we are full of joy, because March is around the corner, and with it comes some highly-anticipated fun and games. Did you know that  the ancient Roman calendar dismissed January and February completely because they didn’t produce any harvest, and considered March the first month of the year? Well, we say annum novum faustum felicem to that … and want to share with you the myriad ways in which PPI is making merry in the month ahead!

Goodness, how we appreciate you for your piano-loving loyalty! Yes, just as roughly 135 million Americans were gawking at Bad Bunny’s halftime show, there you were, cheering on our Tamara Stefanovich. There’s no denying that the Puerto Rican rapper’s performance was a show-stopping and brave statement, and it thrills us to see any musician boldly acting as an agent for change, but there is no doubt in our minds that what Tamara Stefanovich does at the piano (and did for us, on Sunday) is no less fierce, smart or defiant. From her refusal to fall into the traps of nostalgia and romanticizing the past to her curiosity about everything new and current – her performance oozed vivacity and conviction. To boldly appropriate a quite from a review of the Superbowl halftime show:  “Freedom and joy themselves can be acts of resistance. All of those were present during this performance.”

I catch myself often, when writing to you, dear friends of PPI, referencing time and it’s relentless passing: It’s that season again, how can it possibly be time to celebrate this or that, how to communicate so many thoughts in so little time! This is why I was stopped dead in my tracks earlier today, when, in an equisite essay by author/philosopher, Maria Popova, I suddenly connected the dots between acute perception of time, and a deep appreciation for music. Popova writes: “All great storytelling has the shape of music. All music is a shelter in time. In these lives hounded by restlessness, trembling with urgency, we need this shelter, need a place still enough and quiet enough to hear the story of our becoming, the song of life evolution encoded in our cells: Life is exquisitely a time-thing, like music.”

Always searching for practical ways to link the music on my mind to other sensory experiences, a thought came to me this weekend, just as I was scraping the last crumbs of delicious Lauretta Jean’s Chocolate Chess Pie off my dessert plate. Isn’t sonata form, as a structural backbone, similar to kitchen staples like milk, eggs, sugar and flour that can be combined in endless delicious combinations?

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.