Deanna Tham

Portland Chamber Orchestra

Celebrate Lunar New Year with a vibrant fusion of music and dance during this special collaboration between the Portland Chamber Orchestra and White Lotus Foundation. Lion & Lotus: A Festival of Music and Dance brings together modern and traditional art forms in a joyful celebration of creativity and community.

Experience powerful works by acclaimed composers including Oswald Huỳnh, a Portland-native and Rome Prize winner whose music weaves a distinctive Vietnamese-American voice, and Bright Sheng, a Pulitzer Prize finalist known for his evocative Chinese-American compositions. 

The evening also features the mesmerizing ancient art form of lion dance—a popular cultural performance used to scare away evil spirits, as well as to bring joy, prosperity, and good fortune for the new year—performed by the White Lotus Foundation Lion Dancers, which is the largest lion dance team in Oregon.

Lion & Lotus: A Festival of Music and Dance

Patricia Reser Center for the Arts

Explore how music and poetry unite to amplify powerful voices of dissent, resistance, and hope with the Portland Chamber Orchestra. Banner & Burden: Music and Spoken Word is a bold collaboration with the Oregon Poetry Association, featuring original spoken word performances by emerging young poets whose words illuminate the tribulations—and triumphs—of our community.

This moving program showcases evocative works by composers who have used their music to speak truth to power, including the vibrant, contemporary voice of Jessie Montgomery, Valerie Coleman’s celebration of identity and unity, and the deeply expressive music of Dmitri Shostakovich, composed in the shadow of political oppression.