It’s not every day that someone is able to see singers, fiddlers and international guitarists appear on the same stage. Pacific University gives both the students and Forest Grove community this chance with the 22nd season of the Performing Arts Series.
Pacific uses this series as a way to let students and community members get access to a variety of musical performances.
This school year, five professional groups of musicians were booked throughout the fall and spring semester.
“The series is in it’s 22nd year, so it’s been around as long as the Taylor Meade Performing Arts Center has been around,” Director of Events Paula Thatcher said. “We’ve been bringing in professional musicians for a series that is open to the public. We have a lot of community members, faculty and staff who attend the events, and once in a while we get students.”
The season started off on Oct. 17 with the acapella vocal group, m-pact, who were rewarded with positive reviews from their audience in Taylor Meade.
“Our next show is the Quebe sisters,” Thatcher said. “They are country swing group [of] three sisters that are fiddle champions from Texas, and they also sing, so that’s really selling well.”
The Quebe Sisters will be performing on Saturday, Nov. 14 at 7:30 p.m. For the spring term, students can also expect the mobile guitar festival, International Guitar Night, to be arriving on Saturday, Jan. 30 for their 2016 tour.
The year will feature German jazz guitarist Lulo Reinhardt, English fingerstyle guitarist Mike Dawes and showman Andrew Krengel. Further into the spring, the musical ensemble Darlingside will be on campus on Saturday, March 12 to bring Forest Grove a blend of 1960’s style folk and indie-rock music.
“We end with Karl Barnoff, who’s a singer-songwriter from the 1970’s and 1980’s, “ Thatcher said. “And she’s almost sold out already and that’s on April 2. It’s quite different groups, so they appeal to different audiences, we have people coming in from all over to see like a certain group.”
Thatcher strongly recommends that people, especially students, take advantage of these performances.
“We love to get students,” Thatcher said. “We have to market our shows to students a little more, because students are kind of wrapped up in their own music taste a lot of times. We give students half- priced tickets and try to encourage them to go to these things. I think the students that come to them really get a lot out of them.”
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