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Kicking off a Pacific Northwest tour that will culminate with a stop in British Columbia, chamber music trio Evergreen & Oak will perform at Lady Hill Winery (about 45 minutes south of Portland) at 7:30 pm on Friday, Oct. 13.
“A winery location is part of us trying to open up and say, ‘This is an experience you can have the way you’d have a wine tasting—with your friends, where you’re comfortable, surrounded by the beautiful Willamette Valley,” Lisa Neher, the Portland mezzo who is the vocalist of Evergreen & Oak, tells WW. “This is not ‘scary new music,’ whatever people think that might be.”
Titled An Evening of Chamber Music by Living Composers, the concert will feature Neher performing with her creative collaborators, pianist Dr. Abbie Brewer and flautist Rose Bishop. The performance will focus primarily on female composers—including Neher, whose composition She Conjures will be performed.
Featuring a libretto by Bea Goodwin, She Conjures chronicles the aftermath of a Scottish witch trial in 1666, telling a tale that Neher based on historical research.
“What would it be like for a daughter of the last witch trial?” Neher muses. “What would her journey be to understand what happened to her mother? And what is the line between justice and revenge? I actually pulled in a lot of Irish and Scottish folk music.” That included taking inspiration from waulking songs, in which Scottish women spoke nonsense syllables and rhythmically beat pieces of wet cloth.
In Portland’s choral music scene, Neher is recognized not only as a supremely talented artist, but an unfailingly compassionate creator whose passion for animals and the natural world propels her work.
“The concert is about the world we live in,” Neher says. “There’s urban and rural, the animal world, the ‘natural world,’ which is actually all around us, whether we are in an urban environment or a ‘beautiful, natural’ environment. It just looks different.”
SEE IT: Evergreen & Oak trio performs at Lady Hill Winery, 8400 Champoeg Road NE, St. Paul, Ore., 503-678-1240, ladyhill.com. 7:30 pm Friday, Oct. 13. $20-$25.