Oregon Symphony: Portland's Indies
Oct 19, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall
After last season’s perfect pairing with local indie band Blind Pilot (read our story), the symphony’s upping the ante with a night of not one but three guitar- and banjo-plucking acts: Black Prairie (with members of the Decemberists), Holcombe Waller, and Mirah. 

STRFKR
Oct 17, Crystal Ballroom
Touring behind their new full-length, Miracle Mile, this Portland-based synth-pop band stops by the Crystal for a hometown show that's sure to be a sweaty, frenetic dance party.

The Blow
Oct 20, Doug Fir Lounge
Ex-Portland electropop/performance-art project the Blow—a.k.a. Khaela Maricich—produced delightfully oddball pop music in the aughts before going dark for seven years, giving only sporadic, bizarre performances about Lindsay Lohan. Now Maricich emerges, joining forces with installation artist Melissa Dyne, with the Blow's long-awaited, self-titled comeback. We talked with the New York-via-Portland art-pop duo about pop music, their new album, and Lady Gaga before her recent TBA performance. Read the interview. 

Comedy

Dina Martina
Oct 17, Fez Ballroom
When it comes to drag performance art, it’s difficult to set yourself apart. Seattle performer Dina Martina is a world apart. Her cult status stretches from London to LA, and her performances explode in cataclysms of song, comedy, theater, and video. Or, as deliciously described by Seattle’s alt-weekly The Stranger, which awarded her its “Genius Award for Theater”: "Her body moves like two pigs fighting their way out of a sleeping bag and her face looks like the collision of a Maybelline truck with a Shoney's buffet, but Dina redefines what it means to be a star." 

All Jane No Dick
Oct 17–20, Curious Comedy Theater
Curious Comedy Theater’s All Jane No Dick women’s comedy festival celebrates the unique voices of female comedians. To that end, it will feature stand up, improv, panel discussions, and more from a variety of both local and national performers, such as Cameron Esposito (Put Your Hands Together) and Lauren Lapkus (The To-Do List, Orange Is the New Black), as well as the Portland premiere of director and festival headliner Bonnie MacFarlane’s documentary, Women Aren’t Funny. 

Film

Filmusik: Turkish Rambo
Oct 18–26, Hollywood Theatre
What do you do when the political turmoil in your country is such that high-budget American action films like Rambo can’t be shown? If you’re the Turkish filmmakers of the 80’s, you remake those films scene-by-scene, only you add zombies. Hot on the tales of Turkish Star Wars, Filmusik presents Vahsi Kan, Yerli Rambo with live English overdubbing by Portland’s best voice actors and a new orchestral score performed live on stage at the Hollywood Theatre. Watch the trailer here. 

Theater

Sweet and Sad
Sept 27–Oct 20
Closing It's the last weekend to catch Third Rail Rep's excellent Sweet and Sad. It picks up with the Apple family from last year's That Hopey Changey Thing as they gather for a memorial service on the 10th anniversary of September 11, but it dishes up higher stakes, stronger acting, and a more poignant story. Read our full reveiw.

The Great Gatsby
Sep 27–Oct 20
Closing It's also the last weekend to see Bag & Baggage Theatre's most ambitious production yet, the Oregon premiere of Simon Levy’s adaptation of the F. Scott Fitzgerald novel (the only one approved by the Fitzgerald estate). Temporary fly system? Check. Thirty-five foot “boat dock” extending from the stage into the middle of the theatre? Check. Colorful projections including moving images of the text from Fitzgerald’s novel onto the actors and the big screen, reconnecting the theatre production back to the original text in a very compelling, visual way? Check. If you liked the book, get there this weekend. 

Dance

Oregon Ballet Theater: Dream
Oct 12-19, Keller Auditorium
"In the opening night premiere, OBT delivered a stunning performance of Spanish choreographer Nacho Duato’s Por Vos Muero...The work has a particularly magic to it; one that captivates and mystifies at once...Up to the task, OBT’s dancers executed Duato’s chorography with gorgeous carriage, relentlessly fluid movement, and lines and limbs that go on forever. The disappointment only sets in with the realization that the performance does not." The Spanish Renaissance–inspired piece shares the program with former OBT director Christopher Stowell’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Read our full review.

Lucy Guerin Inc
Oct 17–19, Lincoln Hall
Performances by this Aussie choreographer’s company are total sensory experiences, melding dynamic sets, video, and textural sound. “She’s amazingly innovative,” promoter White Bird's co-founder Walter Jaffe says. “This piece is called Weather and is inspired by weather patterns.” 

Classical & Jazz

Oregon Repertory Singers: Elijah
Oct 18, 20; First United Methodist Church
To kick off their 40th season, the Oregon Repertory Singers present two performances of Felix Mendelssohn's masterpiece, Elijah. In what is the enemble's largest production ever, the 90 singers will share the stage with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra and baritone Richard Zeller singing the title role. In the Old Testament, Elijah ascends to heaven in a flaming chariot; this performance promises to be just as fiery.

Randy Weston
Oct 19, Evans Auditorium at Lewis and Clark College 
In tribute to the late Ghanaian-cum-Portland drum master Obo Addy, who taught at Lewis and Clark for 25 years, acclaimed jazz pianist Randy Weston will perform at the college with his group African Rhythms. Weston’s trio will perform with Addy’s former ensemble Okropong, and with the American Music Program in a performance of a commissioned work by Thara Memory. 

The Ensemble: Officium Defunctorum
Oct 20, Saint Stephen Catholic Church
The Ensemble opens their season with a performance of Tomas Luis de Victoria's Officium Defunctorum, considered the 16th century Spanish composer's greatest work. The piece is written for six parts, and the Ensemble will perform it strip-down and crystal clear with a single voice singing each part. 

Family

Wilde Tales
Oct 11–Nov 9, Shaking the Tree Studio 
Review in Short: Although Oscar Wilde is remembered mainly as a flamboyant, controversial personality and playwright, he also penned two early collections of fairy tales geared towards adults as much as children. PSU professor Karin Magaldi adapts them for Shaking the Tree’s intimate stage in an imaginative ensemble production. The six actors use minimal props and a clever set, interspered dialogue and third person narration, and the story of a soul trying to reunite with its body as the device to string the other stories together like a glistening, beaded necklace worthy of a faerie queen. Ensemble member Matthew Kerrigan steals the show with flexibly comedic and tragic characters reminiscent of Johnny Depp (a comparison fueled by his Captain Sparrow long hair, pencil mustache, and soulpatch). The company seems to have targeted adult audiences for the show, though, which I think is a mistake. Acting that felt over zealous to my eye would be transfixing and delightful for younger audiences—indeed, the 11-year-old in front of me didn't even shrug at the two-and-a-half hour runtime. —Aaron Scott

Art

A Moveable Conversation with Kristy Edmunds, Fernanda D'Agostino and Stephen Hayes
Oct 20, Art Gym and Hoffman Gallery
Kristy Edmunds changed the very face of Portland’s art scene when she founded the Portland Institute for Contemporary Art and grew it to international renown. She returns to Portland from her current gig in LA to lead a roving conversation with two of the city’s top artists. The event starts at 2 p.m. at Marylhurst’s Art Gym amid Fernanda D’Agostino multimedia, interactive installation called The Method of Loci. At 3:30, it moves to Lewis and Clark’s Hoffman Gallery, which currently houses a 30 year retrospective of Hayes's work called  Figure/Ground.  

Gallery Guide
Shows thru Nov 2, Pearl District
In case you somehow haven't noticed, the sun is out and the forecast calls for a glorious 70 degrees through the weekend! Take advantage of it by walking around the Pearl to check out some exhibitions you might have passed on at First Thursday earlier this month:

• Famed photographer and photorealist painter Chuck Close puts his work on tapestries at Blue Sky Gallery, while Argentinian photographer Maria Jose D’Amico explores abandoned and disregarded domestic spaces in a bittersweet examination of familial dysfunction.
  
• Seattleite Michael Schultheis transforms equations into paintings at Froelick Gallery: “The eccentric angle of a Universal Coupling is determined by the Trammel of Archimedes,” he writes of the title work. “[It] is given by the equation: {x/(L/2)}^2 + {y/(L/2)}^2 = 1. I painted this equation and explored the corresponding geometry in vermillion and white, respectively.”
• Internationally exhibited artist Dinh Q. Lê meditates on the Buddhist concept of impermanence through his photographs at Elizabeth Leach Gallery.
• Charles Hartman Fine Art highlights Daniel Robinson’s consistently strong, bold yet silent Eastern Oregon landscapes.
• Breeze Block shows Mike Egan, who turned his work in funeral homes into warm paintings about death (and here Halloween), while John Casey transmogrifies his inner demons into trippy pen and ink portraits.
• At Laura Russo, fellow PNCA alums Tom Cramer and Sherrie Wolf continue the work that’s made them Northwest staples—colorful, semi-abstract wood burnings/carvings and paintings that juxtapose still lives with art history references, respectively.
• Monacan artist Jacques Flechmuller paints with oils and wit at PDX Contemporary.