It's late but I can't sleep. The Cascade Festival of Music in Bend has just cancelled its summer season and is rumored to be filing for bankruptcy, and I just found this out less than an hour ago. As a member of the Portland Symphonic Choir, I was going to sing Orff's Carmina Burana at the festival at the end of the summer, and James DePriest was slated to take over as conductor there next year after Murray Sidlin's final concerts this season. Now the entire future of the festival is gravely in doubt.
The CFM meant so much to me as a wee music nerd growing up in the middle of cow country in Terrebonne; there weren't a lot of kids that I grew up with who could play Mozart on the piano or tell you how many symphonies Beethoven wrote, but you can bet those of us who could went to the CFM every summer with our families. My musical hero Dr. Charles Heiden was one of the festival's founders. Dave Stabler's blog has all the depressing news and I posted a comment there. I'm too bummed to write any more about it now.
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