If you’re tired of “Santa Baby” — and who isn’t? — I have a gift for you. I'm going to share my favorite yule-time music with you. This is music you may not know, but I'm sure you are going to love: Gorgeous carols from Appalachia, the sassy, swaying Navidad of Spain’s Joaquin Rodrigo and the heart-stopping beauty of Morten Lauridsen’s “O Magnum Mysterium.”

We'll hear shapenote carols, Ukrainian carols, Orthodox carols and the brilliant, joyful Karolju of Christopher Rouse, plus three lovely Hanukkah songs.

I'm also delighted that the Oregon Cultural Trust will be present to talk about the Trust’s vital work in sustaining culture throughout Oregon.

If you’re looking for a little grace this season, you’ll find it here.

Note the unusual time: 12:30 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 2, Classic Pianos, 3003 SE Milwaukie and Powell Boulevard. Cost: $20 at the door. 503-546-5622.

Thank you for the robust and engaging class on protest music! I loved hearing your comments, including from the woman from Lithuania who talked about walking into the streets of Vilnius with just her passport and a piece of bread in her pockets, joining throngs of people lifting their voices for democracy. The "Singing Revolution" was a powerful moment in history.

Here are links to several videos we watched in class.

Haydn's "Farewell" Symphony, 1775. Sinfonia Rotterdam, Conrad van Alphen, conductor. Start at minute 22:00.

"Go Down Moses," c. 1850, with Paul Robeson.

"Va, Pensiero" from "Nabucco," 1841, by Giuseppe Verdi.

"Strange Fruit," 1939, Billie Holiday

"Dialogues of the Carmelites," 1956, by Francis Poulenc.

"Quiet," 2017, by MILCK

Thank you to everyone who answered my survey questions after the last class. I loved reading your comments and suggestions and have used them in shaping my next series of classes. I especially loved hearing about your connection to the music we explored, reminding you of your father, evoking a powerful memory or sending you to do further research.

As I mentioned at our last class, I've decided to cut back a bit this season, from one class each month to one every other month. Not because I don't love these classes, but because I have a couple of other projects I also want to pursue. We will continue to meet at Classic Pianos.

I posted the dates and class descriptions on the Classes page, but here they are, again. Thank you for your enthusiasm, comments and ideas. See you in October!

4 p.m., Oct. 7, 2018: Music of #protest

Protests are on the rise. There’s probably one near you, today. And while folk music is rich with songs of protest, so is classical music. We explore both popular and classical works that call out war, oppression, racism, abuse, even homelessness.

12:30 p.m., Dec. 2, 2018: Cool holiday music you haven’t heard a million times

Lo, I hear from afar, yule-time music I know you're going to love. These pieces are a tad out of the mainstream, so you probably don't know them. We’ll rejoice in the clarity of English cathedral singers, choral music that swings between Eastern Orthodox chant and American folk hymns and the sassy, swaying Navidad of Spain’s Joaquin Rodrigo.  

4 p.m. Feb. 10, 2019: What’s in a name?

Musical forms are like road maps. They tell us where we are and where we’re going. What’s a sonata? Why are symphonies in four movements? We dig into the most common forms of classical music — sonata, suite, tone poem, rondo, aria — and reveal their hidden, psychological power.   

4 p.m. April 7, 2019: Music in the Mirror

We compare different versions of the same piece, much like the Japanese film Rashomon revealed alternative versions of the same incident. The notes of these musical works may be the same, but we’ll hear startling differences in sound, tempo, touch and emotional impact, exposing how much leeway performers take in the name of interpretation. 

I really enjoyed our second season of classes and I'm mulling dates for next season. The discussion and comments we had after our last class was very helpful and got me thinking about next season. So far, these are class dates I've nailed down, again at Classic Pianos:

Oct. 7
Dec. 2
Feb. 10
April 7

Check back for updates, soon.

Concertos are among the most dramatic forms of classical music, which is one reason we have so many extraordinary examples in the literature, from Mozart, Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff, Bartok and others. Great composers can’t resist the musical and theatrical possibilities of this particular form: One person going up against an entire orchestra.

The most important fact about concertos is that audiences wait for the soloist to enter and when she stops, they wait for her to begin again. The opening introduction sets the scene, creating a sense of anticipation, that something is about to happen.

And when the soloist does enter, we know that virtuosity will be on display. Pyrotechnics will ensue. Tension will be high. Reputations will be on the line. And that makes them terrific fun for us to experience, either in the concert hall or on recordings.

But what if the soloist doesn't wait for an orchestral introduction? Mozart was the first composer to sense the dramatic possibilities of not waiting. Beethoven expanded that idea, as did others who followed.

In my next class, May 20, we will explore two unusual elements: When concertos break the rules and those extraordinary cadenzas when the orchestra stops and the soloist brings out the howitzers. 

At my next class, April 29, I would like you to imagine you are a composer. Your job is to organize sounds into coherent form. Where do you look for inspiration? You might begin by looking at sources close by: Music you heard as a baby, rocking in your mother’s arms. Or in school, in church, or when your grandmother sang to you. Maybe you remember music you heard at dances, weddings or funerals, on the radio, in recordings or on soundtracks to films. And some of this music stuck with you.

It spoke to you with its rhythms and melodies — moved your heart, resonated deep inside because it said something about who you are, where you live, the work you did, the stories you heard, the joys and sorrows you read about or experienced.    

We’re talking about music that has been passed down from one generation to another — folk music — an enormously rich tradition that has inspired classical composers for centuries, and continues, today.

We will hear how Bach inserted popular ditties into his sublime “Goldberg” Variations. Chopin found echoes of his Polish homeland in the Mazurka. Lou Harrison merged Indonesia’s gentle gamelan with his own beautiful melodies and Portland’s Kenji Bunch evokes the pounding rhythms of southern chain gangs in a mesmerizing symphony. 

Join us, 4 p.m. Sunday, April 29, at Classic Pianos.

Here's a sample:

We covered a lot of music at my class, March 25, and I'm sorry we didn't get to everything I had prepared. The class felt a little rushed and I'm sorry we didn't spend more time discussing each performance. Next time, I'll reduce the number of performers.

Here are all 16 of the performances I had planned to share with you. We heard two singers perform the same aria so we could compare voices, personalities and musical styles, and we explored how each singer acted with his or her voice. We had to skip Nos. 9 and 10, Fritz Wunderlich and Francisco Araiza in "Dies Bildnis" from Mozart's "The Magic Flute," and Nos. 13 and 14, Gerald Finley and Dietrich Henschel singing "Batter My Heart" from "Dr. Atomic" by John Adams. And we listened to only a few moments of Nos. 15 and 16, Barbara Hannigan and Audrey Luna, in Gyorgy Ligeti's "Le Grand Macabre."

Enjoy, and I'll see you April 29 for folk-inspired music. Many composers, from Mozart, Chopin and Brahms to Bartok, Astor Piazzolla and Osvaldo Golijov, found inspiration in folk music, transforming their work while keeping it grounded in the classical tradition.

A conductor waves a wand and without a word, 100 people create perfect harmony. At every moment, a conductor transmits a huge amount of information instantly and accurately to a diverse group of people with individual skills, experiences, hopes, fears, egos and mortgages. For two hours, not one word is exchanged between leader and followers. And at the end, when the conductor turns to face the auditorium, the audience will often leap to its feet, cheering and clapping.

In what other profession do we see this kind of wizardry?

At my next class, Feb. 11, we will look at how a handful of well-known conductors lead their orchestras, and what their vastly different styles say about leadership in general. Riccardo Muti dictates every note and phrase. Richard Strauss sticks closely to the score. Herbert von Karajan closes his eyes, making the musicians guess his intentions. Carlos Kleiber revels in his players' contributions and Leonard Bernstein lets them do their very best.

Here's a preview. Carlos Kleiber is one of the greatest conductors of all time. Born in Berlin in 1930, he conducted very little, "only when his freezer was empty," quipped Herbert von Karajan. But, musicians adored him because he allowed them to shine. He died in 2004. Note his  enjoyment of the musicians.

In my latest class, we had a great time exploring the music of three 19th-century Americans: Stephen Foster, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and John Philip Sousa. All three were originals, creating a new kind of music that captured something uniquely American. All three became phenomenally successful. All three were entertainers who never claimed to be art composers. And all three helped commercialize music in new forms of popular art.

For all his success, Gottschalk is less known, today. He was born in New Orleans to an English businessman and a Creole mother, the first of eight children, and he showed early talent on the piano. At the age of 13, he sailed to Europe to receive “proper” classical training, but the Paris Conservatoire rejected him without even hearing him play, on the grounds of his nationality, saying, "America is a country of steam engines.” However, after Gottschalk gave a concert at the famous Paris concert hall, Salle Pleyel, Chopin remarked: "Give me your hand, my child; I predict that you will become the king of pianists." Franz Liszt also recognized Gottschalk's talent.

If you are new to Gottschalk's music, you'll enjoy some of these selections: 

"La Bamboula": Written at 16, this New Orleans dance contains a cakewalk rhythm — an exaggerated style of dance based on aristocratic European styles — and glittering virtuosity. The name "Bamboula" refers to an African-Caribbean drum. The composition has a strongly rhythmic melody and unfolds in three sections (A-A-B). The introduction begins with notes like a drum beat.

"La Gallina": (“The Hen") In the middle of the 20th century, Eugene List, an American pianist, helped revive Gottschalk’s music with a series of recordings. This exuberant Cuban dance has fun with both the cakewalk and habañera rhythms, and mimics a hen's clucking. The late New York Times  critic Harold Schonberg wrote that the effect is “highly Ivesian, even though Charles Ives had as yet not been born.”

"La Savane" ("The Savanna"): This is based on a slave song whose melody is similar to "Skip To My Lou”. A ballade, "La Savane" was supposedly inspired by the local story that the skeletons of runaway slaves that had perished in the swamps around the city of New Orleans had turned into oak trees. It's a set of gentle variations.

"The Banjo": Composed in 1853, this is one of Gottschalk's best-known works. His banjo imitations were so accurate, musicologists studied them to learn the sound of pre-Civil War African-American banjo playing. The melodies develop until the piece ends with a brilliant pair of variations, containing "Camptown Races." In this performance, the pianist inserts his own notes, at times.

Pianist Cypriern Katsaris, born in Marseilles, studied at the Paris Conservatoire, where, ironically,  Gottschalk was not admitted because he was American. You will notice you are seeing a few examples of pianists attempting to put their own personality on this showy music.

"Souvenir de Porto (not Puerto) Rico": This is a processional piece that seems to arrive from a distance, reaches fortissimo and recedes into the distance. March rhythms mix with a habanera as it indulges in what Gottschalk says is “the full force of chromatic grapeshot and deadly octaves.” At the climax, as the procession envelopes us, listen to the rumba rhythm — 3 + 3 + 2 -- that suggests a forward lurch then a stutter. It’s sexy, fun and jazzy.