The Latest in Portland Arts News—Patti Smith is Portland Bound!
Patti Smith's M Train comes out in October.
Patti Smith is Portland-bound
Rock icon, poet, memoirist and all round living legend Patti Smith is coming to Portland, on tour with her new memoir M Train.
The follow-up to the National Book Award winning Just Kids, M Train is described by the publishers Knopf as “a coffee-saturated odyssey into the mind of a legendary artist…told through the prism of the cafes and haunts Smith has worked in around the world.”
The book comes out in October, with Smith’s Portland stop on her 17-city tour slated for November 20. She’ll be reading at the Newmark Theatre in an event presented by Powell’s. Tickets are already on sale, with the price including a copy of the book M Train.
Division Leap and Passages On the Move—Again!
Just months after they found a new home at the industrial Eastside’s Towne Storage building, the space-sharing bookstores Division Leap and Passages are on the move again, to destinations unknown. The peripatetic stores—over the past decade Division Leap alone has jumped across multiple city quadrants—opened for business at their new co-habitational space in January of this year, only to announce this week that the building has been sold to a developer.
Both stores have put out the call for leads on new spaces, though the move may necessitate a parting of the ways if the right location doesn't present itself. “If the right space materialized, we would continue to share space which would be delightful,” says Passages’ David Abel. “The reality is that seems unlikely.”
The two stores, along with all the other artists in the building, have been told by the building manager that they have until October 31 to pack up. The final exhibition in their gallery space will be the newly-opened show by poet and visual artist Jim Dine, entitled Poems to Work On, which is also the name of his most recent collection. It comprises an installation of floor-to-ceiling poems written out by the poet in charcoal or crayon and reflecting his writing process in the visible corrections and erasing.
Thomas Lauderdale to Open Hillsboro Concert Series
Thomas Lauderdale. Photo by Autumn de Wilde
Pink Martini frontman and Portland stalwart Thomas Lauderdale will open the Glenn and Viola Waters Cultural Arts Center 2015/2016 concert series in Hillsboro next month. Lauderdale will give two solo piano performances—September 25/26—to launch the season, which also promises shows from Rio Con Brio, Naomi Wachira, The Barn Owls and Kate Davis. More information about the lineup here.
Shrek, Alice And More! NW Children’s Theater's New Season
Northwest Children’s Theater has revealed its lineup for the 2015/16 season, with Shrek, Alice in Wonderland and Snow White all making appearances. The theater and school’s 23rd season kicks off September 26 with Elephant And Piggie’s “We Are In A Play”, a musical based on the Elephant and Piggie books by Mo Willems. October brings The Sun Serpent, by José Cruz González, an exploration of myth and the bonds of brotherhood, while Shrek—The Musical is their holiday season offering running December 5 to January 3. In 2016, a jazz musical production of Alice in Wonderland and a return of Northwest Children’s Theater original adaptation of Snow White will complete the season.
