About Music - Portland Baroque Orchestra

Emerging twenty years ago as a grass-roots cooperative of musicians, the orchestra has matured as a polished, professional organization with a loyal and committed audience that now numbers some 1000 subscription ticket holders and 1100 single-ticket purchasers. The group offers performances in downtown Portland at the First Baptist Church and at Kaul Auditorium on the Reed College campus. PBO inhabits a modest yet critical niche in the Portland arts community. PBO’s highly specialized orchestral mission complements the Oregon Symphony’s broader purpose. Its narrow focus contrasts well with Friends of Chamber Music and Chamber Music Northwest and its vocal offerings are on a different scale from those of Portland Opera. PBO joins the others to offer the classical music lover a multi-faceted array of options. The Portland Baroque Orchestra specializes in performing baroque and classical music on original instruments, or replicas, from the time the music was composed. These instruments, and the techniques used to play them, produce an orchestral texture very different from that of their modern counterparts. The improvisation and wit of historically informed performance practices add freshness, clarity, and vitality to the music of Buxtehude, Corelli, Purcell, Scarlatti, Bach, Telemann, Couperin, Vivaldi, Handel, Mozart, Beethoven and many others, linking us directly to a rich and vital past. PBO’s artistic excellence places it squarely within the ranks of the best baroque orchestras in North America and Europe. Many consider music director Monica Huggett to be the premier baroque violinist performing today. A growing list of the world’s best singers, guest conductors, and instrumentalists in the field of baroque performance now consider Portland an important addition to their musical resumes. I get to hear this heavenly music just about every month. I volunteer as an usher and in return get a free seat. Talk about a deal! Find out more about PBO at: www.pbo.org