Climb on board with the 10th anniversary Oregon Festival of American Music! Packed with our usual rich blend of musical genres, Loco-Motion: Rhythm & the New World in the Age of Machines promises to be our best festival ever! Conductor & Artistic Advisor James Paul leads the Festival symphony orchestra in two exceptional evenings of classical music, and Jazz Advisor Dick Hyman has once again pulled together superb company of guests for 10 additional concerts of jazz, musical theater, swing, and root music that you won't want to miss.
OFAM 2001, Loco-Motion, spins on two axles. First, there is the vast repertoire from just about every musical genre that is dedicated to or inspired by trains, cars, mechanical things and other vestiges of the Machine Age -- that rapidly-fading era when our devices of industry and convenience actually whirred, clicked, and chugged in beautiful, fascinating patterns. These patterns of sound fundamentally shaped the pulse and sense of our lives and it is natural that this influence would visit itself on our music both thematically and structurally.
Second, there is the special role that rhythm has played in the music of the 20th century and especially, but not exclusively, of the New World--another old-fashioned notion which cannot be applied in this, our international century, with much meaning but hearkens to a milieu of newly-mixed souls and traditions that dragged everyone throughout the world inexorably into new realities. These two conceptual foci led to our subtitle: Rhythm & The New World In The Age of Machines.