Live music and live cooking are rarely paired together, but you can catch them en deux this weekend at Pickathon's Curation series. Musicians and local chefs are matched for 80-seat multi-course meals, where both the chefs and the musicians perform live on stage in front of the audience.

Tickets for this year’s Curation series are still available ($95 per person per meal). Pickathon aims to present musicians who are up-and-coming, often on the verge of a national breakout—"somewhere between the Wonder Ballroom and the Roseland Theater,” explains Pickathon founder Zale Schoenborn. The goal is the same for the Curation chefs. This year's pairings feature five meals (two brunches, two dinners, and a happy hour): Say She She with Carlo Lamagna of Magna, Ocie Elliott with Maylin Chávez of Nácar, W.I.T.C.H. with Cindy Tran of Yoonique Phở & Grill, Andrew Marlin of Watchhouse with Chef Jimmy Askren of Bellwether Bar, and Butcher Brown with Kei & HJ of Pasture PDX.

The series began in 2008 as an outgrowth of Pickathon’s blossoming culinary offerings. "It was a very natural fit to say, ‘What do these two art forms look like side by side?’” says Keith Bidwell, Pickathon’s culinary director. “It’s a complex sensory experience.”

Other festivals incorporate music and food, but without integration. The Hot Luck festival in Austin hosts live cooking events and live music events separately, but not together; Coachella offers a seated dinner with world-class chefs, but far away from the bustle of live performances. You can see the videos of past Pickathon Curation events here, which have included pairings like chef Karl Holl with Tank and the Bangas, Maya Lovelace with Y La Bamba, Ed Sablan with Black Pumas, and Doug Adams and Tommy Habetz with Billy Strings. 

So how does the Pickathon team approach pairing chefs and musicians? “We want them to be able to draw on something shared from their lives,” says Bidwell, such as upbringing, or similar musical and culinary genres or, in one case, a play on words: Pasture is a whole-animal butcher shop and restaurant, and Pickathon is calling its meal with jazz quintet Butcher Brown the “Meating of the Butchers.” Musicians’ dietary preferences are also taken into account (no vegan musicians paired with meat maestros).

Last year, Chef Luna Contreras, of the veggie-filled Mexican pop-up Chelo, was paired with Philadelphia indie rock artist Rosali, whose songs tend toward the slow and melodic with heavy guitar riffs and pulsing percussion for a bit of an edge. Contreras contacted Rosali to learn about her ingredient preferences, then flipped through her cookbooks while listening to Rosali's music. “We’re both fun, expressive, and quirky,” says Contreras. The menu, designed for the 100-plus degree day, included a riff on gazpacho, an herby turnip salad, and a take on tres leches cake, plus tempeh for Rosali’s vegetarian bandmates.

Contreras found the experience of cooking in public, rather than behind the kitchen doors, to be “thrilling. You can definitely express yourself—and once the music starts playing, you get to dance,” she says.

We can imagine pairings of Portland musicians and chefs: how about Unknown Mortal Orchestra with Megan Sanchez of Guëro? Or Black Belt Eagle Scout with Sarah Minnick of Lovely’s Fifty Fifty? A food writer can dream.