Free Fourth of July Community Concert
2025-07-04 16:00 - 17:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Newport Middle School, 825 NE 7th Street, Newport, OR, 97365, United States
Join the Newport Symphony for our Annual Fourth of July Concert!
This concert is FREE for all to attend as a true celebration of our community!
This year, the NSO under the baton of Maestro Adam Flatt, welcomes back Oregon’s Own Miss America, Katie Harman Ebner! Katie has parlayed her Miss America experience into a robust and multifaceted career in opera, musical theater as well as with symphony orchestras and a variety of special projects from live stage to television, and spanning genres including Broadway and jazz. She’ll wow you with the power of her voice as she sings selections from the great American songbook. You will enjoy all your patriotic favorites as well as a couple of surprises.
July 4th, 2025
4:00pm
Newport Middle School
We’ll see you there!

Newport Symphony - Listening for Beethoven
2025-09-27 19:30 - 21:00, 2025-09-28 14:00 - 15:30 | Newport Performing Arts Center, 777 W Olive St, Newport, OR, 97365, United States
Ben Kim, piano*
Willamette Master Chorus, Paul Klemme, director
Gabriela Lena Frank, Elegía Andina
Jake Runestad, A Silence Haunts Me*
Ludwig van Beethoven, Piano Concerto No. 5 in E flat major, Op. 73 “Emperor”*
Ludwig van Beethoven, Choral Fantasy in C minor, for Piano, Chorus, and Orchestra, Op. 80*
We are excited to start the season off with a powerful tribute to one of the greatest composers of all time.
The concert begins with Elegía Andina, by Gabriela Lena Frank. She grew up with neurosensory high-moderate/near-profound hearing loss. Regardless of this challenge, Frank has become an incredible force in the world of music. This piece is dedicated to her older brother Marcos and explores what it means to be from different ethnical persuasions through traditional Peruvian elements.
Next we move on to Jake Runestad’s moving exploration of Beethoven’s deafness. Pianist Ben Kim and the Willamette Master Chorus led by Dr. Paul Klemme, join the Newport Symphony for this transformative music is set to a poem by the composer’s friend, Todd Boss. This text explores Beethoven’s mindset at his growing deafness while using some of the maestro’s own musical ideas. According to Dr. Jonathan Talberg:
“Runestad has done what he does best—written a score where the poetry creates the form, where the text drives the rhythm, where the melody supports the emotional content, and where the natural sounding vocal lines, arresting harmony, and idiomatic accompaniment — in this case, piano in honor of Beethoven — come together to offer the audience an original, engaging, thoughtful, and passionate work of choral art.”
Our friends in the chorus take a well earned break as Ben Kim and the NSO put Beethoven front and center with his aptly titled “Emperor” concerto. This is without question a masterwork although it has a sad asterisk alongside the grand title. Piano Concerto No. 5 was the first of Beethoven’s concertos that he did not premiere himself, this because his hear was deteriorating significantly. Nonetheless, he has given us a remarkable work that has changed the landscape of all the concertos that follow.
Tonight’s concert closes with the great Choral Fantasy in C minor. We welcome the Willamette Master Chorus back to the stage with Ben Kim, Maestro Adam Flatt, and the great Newport Symphony Orchestra. On the night of December 22, 1808, Beethoven was giving the Viennese premiere of Symphony No. 5, Symphony No. 6, his Fourth Piano Concerto, with him as the soloist, and he decided he needed a grand finale, of sorts, to bring this FOUR HOUR concert to a close. The result, this Choral Fantasy. The musicologist William Runyan writes, “Beethoven may have ground out the Choral Fantasy in haste at the last minute, to serve the dubious function as a concert-ending flag waiver, but the audience that night got much more than it expected.”

Newport Symphony - Gandelsman Returns!
2025-11-08 19:30 - 21:30, 2025-11-09 14:00 - 15:30 | Newport Performing Arts Center, 777 W Olive St, Newport, OR, 97365, United States
Gandelsman Returns!
Adam Flatt, conductor
Johnny Gandelsman, violin*
November 8th, 2025 – 7:30pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center – Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm
November 9th, 2025 – 2:00pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center.
Jennifer Higdon, Blue Cathedral
Felix Mendelssohn, Violin Concerto in E minor, Op. 64*
Piotr Ilych Tchaikovsky, Symphony No. 6 in B minor, Op. 74 “Pathétique”
Buy tickets online HERE FOR SATURDAY or HERE FOR SUNDAY.
We begin this evening’s concert with renowned American composer, Jennifer Higdon. Written in 1999, Blue Cathedral was commissioned for the 75th anniversary of the Curtis Institute. Titles of musical compositions are often—most often it can seem—misleading, but this one is singularly apt. Cast in a single short movement of lush, soothing cascades of orchestra sound, the over-used descriptor, “shimmering,” is more than apropos in this case. Imaginative scoring for strings and delicate percussion—including exotic bells and water glasses—are the foundation for an evocation of the atmosphere of the title. Short motives from various wind instruments provide aphoristic commentaries throughout, but generally without what would call “tunes.” The whole weft of sound seems to gently and constantly float upward without having to start all over at the “bottom.” It’s a remarkable and sensual musical experience, and justly deserves its popularity as perhaps the composer’s most performed composition.
Next up, we celebrate the welcome return of local favorite and MacArthur Genius Fellow, Johnny Gandelsman. Mendelssohn wrote several concertos for both piano and for violin. The last concerto, for violin, is one of the most important solo works of the nineteenth century. Finished in the fall of 1844, after many years of work, the concerto is the product of a man at the height of his artistic powers. At the time Mendelssohn was literally the toast of Europe, composing fervidly, visiting everywhere as guest conductor and composer, serving as music administrator of a new conservatory in Leipzig, and all the while trying to cope with the bedeviling trials of an official appointment at the Prussian court at Berlin and Potsdam. He was literally working himself to death, and his life, indeed only lasted a few more years. The concerto was premièred in 1845 in Leipzig by Mendelssohn’s friend, the great violinist, Ferdinand David, himself a noted composer (yay trombones!) but the performance of it by the very young virtuoso of violin, Joseph Joachim, one month before Mendelssohn’s death in 1847 must have been a particularly poignant one. At the time he was driven to incapacitation by the death of his beloved sister; that and his onerous professional schedule led to a series of strokes that killed him. Johnny Gandelsman’s performance is certain to move you to new emotional heights.
The evening concludes with Tchaikovsky’s massive Symphony No. 6. Maestro Adam Flatt and the Newport Symphony will take you on a powerful journey into the depths of the composer’s very soul. This symphony is Tchaikovsky’s last work—he died of cholera only nine days after its première—and it is universally hailed as one of his finest. It exhibits all of the characteristic passion and melodic beauty for which the composer justly is known, and is suffused with a dark and tragic essence. Tchaikovsky struggled all of his life with his identity, fears of social rejection, and frustrated relationships with others. By the end of his life these issues had surely come to a head, and the composer freely spoke with his brother of the reflection of his suffering in this final, gripping composition. There is even a current musicological fight over whether or not he poisoned himself to end his life (under threat of social disgrace), or deliberately drank the un-boiled glass of water during an epidemic. In any case, the circumstances of his life’s final struggles are manifest in this beautiful and tragic work. In the event, he had at first actually considered “Tragic” as a subtitle for the symphony, but his brother suggested the Russian for “pathos,” and the French equivalent, “pathétique,” is the evocative descriptor that we all know. But, be aware of inexact translations–there is nothing pathetic here.

Newport Symphony - Listening for Shakespeare
2026-03-21 19:30 - 21:00 | Newport Performing Arts Center, 777 W Olive St, Newport, OR, 97365, United States
Frank Oden, performance poet
March 21st, 2026 – 7:30pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center. Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm
Otto Nicolai, Overture to “The Merry Wives of Windsor”
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Suite from “Much Ado About Nothing”
Giuseppe Verdi, Ballet Music from “Macbeth”
Dan Kellogg, “Pyramus and Thisbe”
Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story”
A concert like none other! Maestro Adam Flatt welcomes performance poet Frank Oden to share the stage with the Newport Symphony Orchestra!
Mr. Oden will connect the works together with the wondrous performances of some incredible music inspired by the immortal William Shakespeare. The concert will weave together the dramas, the comedy, the tragedy, and heartfelt honesty.
Join the shenanigans of Sir John Falstaff as he tries to seduce “The Merry Wives of Windsor” for financial gain. Follow the gossipy intrigue of Claudio and Hero and Beatrice and Benedick. Can you hear the vile Don John almost ruining the whole thing?
Join the orchestra on a trip to Scotland and dance to ballet music that eases the burden of the bloody king. Next, we’re off to Greece to hear the sad story that inspired Shakespeare’s, Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe”, two youths madly in love trading whispers through a crack in the wall before their sad fate is met. We close with Bernstein’s take on those star crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, in his landmark “West Side Story”. The Symphonic Dances will have you dancing in your seats, you won’t want the fun to end!
All of this connected and shared with the dramatic expertise of our guest, Frank Oden.
Enjoy!

Newport Symphony - Listening for Shakespeare
2026-03-22 14:00 - 15:30 | Newport Performing Arts Center, 777 W Olive St, Newport, OR, 97365, United States
Frank Oden, performance poet
March 22nd, 2026 – 2:00pm at the Newport Performing Arts Center. Pre-concert chat with Maestro Adam Flatt at 6:45pm
Otto Nicolai, Overture to “The Merry Wives of Windsor”
Erich Wolfgang Korngold, Suite from “Much Ado About Nothing”
Giuseppe Verdi, Ballet Music from “Macbeth”
Dan Kellogg, “Pyramus and Thisbe”
Leonard Bernstein, Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story”
A concert like none other! Maestro Adam Flatt welcomes performance poet Frank Oden to share the stage with the Newport Symphony Orchestra!
Mr. Oden will connect the works together with the wondrous performances of some incredible music inspired by the immortal William Shakespeare. The concert will weave together the dramas, the comedy, the tragedy, and heartfelt honesty.
Join the shenanigans of Sir John Falstaff as he tries to seduce “The Merry Wives of Windsor” for financial gain. Follow the gossipy intrigue of Claudio and Hero and Beatrice and Benedick. Can you hear the vile Don John almost ruining the whole thing?
Join the orchestra on a trip to Scotland and dance to ballet music that eases the burden of the bloody king. Next, we’re off to Greece to hear the sad story that inspired Shakespeare’s, Ovid’s “Pyramus and Thisbe”, two youths madly in love trading whispers through a crack in the wall before their sad fate is met. We close with Bernstein’s take on those star crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet, in his landmark “West Side Story”. The Symphonic Dances will have you dancing in your seats, you won’t want the fun to end!
All of this connected and shared with the dramatic expertise of our guest, Frank Oden.
Enjoy!

Oregon East Symphony - Summer Concert
2026-06-07 14:30 - 16:00 | Vert Auditorium, 480 SW Dorion Avenue, Pendleton, OR, 97801, United States
Program:
Buetti – Odyssey Overture for OrchestraBach – Concerto for oboe and violinStravinsky – Petrushka (1947)
