The music that celebrated love and human connection received superb performances by a trio of top-tier artists at the beautiful LaJoie Theatre inside the Chehalem Cultural Center in Newberg on April 17. Soprano Katharine Dain, violist Caitlin Lynch, and pianist Ieva Jokubaviciute delivered an intimate program entitled This Love Between Us, which was sponsored by Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley, a non-profit organization – now in its tenth year – that supports need-based scholarships to music lessons for students.
Founded by Lynch, who is also its Artistic Director, Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley has donated $25,000 since it started in 2016. As a way to reach more and more communities, PCM branched out to the Newberg area for the first time. All of the proceeds from the concert benefitted the financial aid fund of Young Musicians & Artists, a terrific summer camp that has taken place at Willamette University every summer for the past 60 years. (Read my report on YMA here.)
Based in the Netherlands, Dain is a stellar singer whose resume includes appearances with opera companies, orchestras, chamber music ensembles, and song recitals in Europe and North America. Lynch, who grew up in Salem, Oregon, is the violist of the Aeolus String Quartet and a co-Artistic Director of the conductorless chamber orchestra A Far Cry. She participated in the Experiential Orchestra’s 2021 Grammy Award–winning recording of Dame Ethyl Smith’s The Prison. Jokubaviciute is known to many Portlanders for her work with Chamber Music Northwest, and she has played at many other international festivals like Marlboro, Ravinia, Lake Champlain Chamber Music Festival, and Festival Mozaic.
The Project Chamber Music: Willamette Valley concert offered selections in English and German. The title of the program came from Reena Esmail’s piece of the same name. Esmail draws on her Indian heritage for the music style – slurred tones that slide between notes were marvelously evoked by Dain and Lynch and supported with great sensitivity by Jokubaviciute. The piece crescendo-ed with the words “Are you searching for me” before subsiding and ending in a sea of calm…