Portland’5 Highlights International Music & Inspiring Stories at the Newmark Theatre
Image: Jason Quigley
Portland’5 Centers for the Arts strives to bring a diverse variety of programming to Portland’s iconic downtown venues: Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, Keller Auditorium, Newmark Theatre, Winningstad Theatre, and Brunish Theatre. This Spring is no different, with performances representing cultures from around the globe, a wildly inspiring story of overcoming hearing loss to winning America’s Got Talent, and even a live revue of an animated classic that’s soon coming back to the airwaves.
January 12th • 7:30pm • Newmark Theatre
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Re-live your “younger years” and see your favorite Animaniacs characters sing live on stage in Animaniacs in Concert–a musical revue starring original cast member Rob Paulsen (Yakko, and Pinky from Pinky & the Brain), accompanied by Emmy winning composer Randy Rogel, who wrote and created many of those memorable songs you STILL can’t remove from your brain!
February 4th • 7:30pm • Newmark Theatre
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The Silkroad Ensemble creates music that engages difference, sparking radical cultural collaboration and passion-driven learning to build a more hopeful world. Founded by cellist Yo-Yo Ma, the group is a “roving musical laboratory without walls.” (Boston Globe)
Silkroad musicians and composers hail from more than 20 countries, drawing on a rich tapestry of traditions to create a new musical language–a uniquely engaging and accessible encounter between the foreign and the familiar that reflects our many-layered contemporary identities. As the Los Angeles Times has said, Silkroad’s "vision of international cooperation is not what we read in our daily news reports. Theirs is the better world available if we, like these extraordinary musicians, agree to make it one.”
February 20th • 7:30pm • Newmark Theatre
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2017 marked the 55th Anniversary of The Chieftains beginning. Since 1962, they have been six-time Grammy Award winners and been highly recognized for reinventing traditional Irish music on a contemporary and International scale.
As cultural ambassadors, their performances have been linked with seminal historic events, such as being the first Western musicians to perform on the Great Wall of China, participating in Roger Water’s “The Wall” performance in Berlin in 1990, and being the first ensemble to perform a concert in the Capitol Building in Washington DC. In 2010, their experimental collaborations extended to out of this world, when Paddy Moloney’s whistle and Matt Molloy’s flute travelled with NASA astronaut, Cady Coleman, to the International Space Station.
March 4th • 7:30pm • Newmark Theatre
“From the first note, Mandy Harvey tames her audience into stunned appreciation as she glides pitch-perfect from breathy jazz standard to growling blues... At show’s end, the audience is on its feet. Some know the secret. Harvey has not heard any of it – not the applause, not the talent of the musicians who shared the stage, not her own incredible voice.” – Los Angeles Times
Mandy Harvey is a deaf American singer-songwriter. A Vocal Music Education major at Colorado State University, Mandy lost her residual hearing in 2006-2007 at age eighteen due to a neurological disorder, and left the program. She pursued several career options, including education, but returned to music in 2008. She quickly became a regular performer at Jay's Bistro in Fort Collins and then branched out to having regular concerts at Dazzle Jazz Lounge in Denver (Top 100 Jazz venues in the world).
Mandy’s music has begun to attract the attention of those around the world, adding to her message of hope, dream and believe. For instance, CNN’s Great Big Story captured over 6 million hits on social media, Burt’s Bees signed her up for their remarkable women campaign, NBC Nightly News profiled her, and she has started performing at the world’s most prestigious clubs, concert stages and festivals around the country.
Though her hearing loss is profound, her timing, pitch and passion are perfect. With support from friends, family and her faith, Mandy continues to find joy in the music.
April 1st • 7:30pm • Newmark Theatre
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From the South Carolina low-country, where life is laced with African ways, comes Ranky Tanky, a quintet with music rooted in Gullah culture. From descendants of enslaved Africans isolated on the southeastern Sea Islands, Gullah is a unique mix of African and English that has shaped American art, food, language, and attitude. Translated loosely as "Get Funky!," Ranky Tanky updates traditional Gullah game songs, spirituals, and shouts with gospel vocals, jazz trumpet, and an R&B rhythm section.
"Ranky Tanky, from Charleston, S.C. sings old Gullah songs–some of them sly moral lessons–in arrangements that connect their beat to a New Orleans lilt."– New York Times
South Carolina natives Quentin Baxter, Kevin Hamilton, Charlton Singleton, and Clay Ross first came together in 1998, fresh out of University, to form a seminal Charleston jazz quartet. Now, united by years apart and a deeper understanding of home, these accomplished artists have come together again, joined by one of the low-country’s most celebrated vocalists Quiana Parler, to revive a “Heartland of American Music” born in their own backyards.
