240 Strings

10/16/2026

🎶 TONIGHT!
The wait is over.

Life threw us a curveball, and we had to change our program for tonight. The concert is called “The B Side: Bach, Beach, Boulanger & Brahms."

Four distinctive voices meet in an intimate dialogue between cello and piano. Bach’s luminous architecture unfolds with timeless clarity, while Amy Beach brings tender, songful warmth. Lili Boulanger’s shimmering, otherworldly colors open a window to mystery, and Brahms answers with deep currents of longing and passion. Together, these composers reveal chamber music’s enduring power to connect past and present—and to join two instruments into one unforgettable conversation.
FEATURING:

🎹 Anastasia Antonacos, piano
🎻 Timothy Paek, cello

Join us for this special evening as we celebrate music, friendship, and a new chapter at the Crewe Center for the Arts.

📅 October 16
🕖 7 PM

Be part of our first concert in this beautiful new home.

Tickets are at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/
📅 October 16
🕖 7 PM
📍 Crewe Center for the Arts
Bring a friend. Come listen. Celebrate the power of music and friendship. ❤️

10/15/2026

10/15/2026

Ooh la la, check out this preview of tomorrow's concert by Anastasia Antonacos and Tim Paek! March 16, 7pm, Crewe Center Arts, tickets available at Port Tix!!

10/15/2026

✨ A new space. A special beginning.

October 16 marks our first concert at the Crewe Center for the Arts, and we couldn’t imagine a better way to begin.

Life threw us a curveball, and we had to change our program for tomorrow night. The concert is called “The B Side: Bach, Beach, Boulanger & Brahms."

Four distinctive voices meet in an intimate dialogue between cello and piano. Bach’s luminous architecture unfolds with timeless clarity, while Amy Beach brings tender, songful warmth. Lili Boulanger’s shimmering, otherworldly colors open a window to mystery, and Brahms answers with deep currents of longing and passion. Together, these composers reveal chamber music’s enduring power to connect past and present—and to join two instruments into one unforgettable conversation.
FEATURING:

🎹 Anastasia Antonacos, piano
🎻 Timothy Paek, cello

Join us for this special evening as we celebrate music, friendship, and a new chapter at the Crewe Center for the Arts.

📅 October 16
🕖 7 PM

Be part of our first concert in this beautiful new home.
Tickets can be found at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/

10/09/2026

If you haven't seen the Blossom Arts Lab at the Crewe Center for the Arts at USM Portland campus, come to our concert and experience it for yourself! It is a lovely, open space with customizable seating, massive windows behind the performers, gorgeous wood, remarkable sound quality and a beautiful Steinway grand.
We'd love to share this hall and some great piano trio music with you on Friday, October 16, at 7pm! Find tickets at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/

10/02/2026

Another phenomenal composer on our Oct. 16, 7pm concert at the Crewe Center: Mel Bonis! You won't want to miss hearing her works for piano trio. Tickets are at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/
Mélanie "Mel" Bonis (21 January 1858, Paris - 18 March 1937, Sarcelles, Val-d'Oise, France) was a French composer and pianist.

Bonis began studying piano at an early age, being self-taught until the age of 16 when she was introduced to French composer César Franck. From there she studied with Franck and Ernest Guiraud at the Paris Conservatoire alongside Claude Debussy and Gabriel Pierné. During her time at the Conservatoire, she was an exceptional student, earning first prize in harmony and second prize in accompaniment. In addition to this she adopted the pseudonym "Mel" to avoid feminine connotations with her name Mélanie.

Her time at the Conservatoire was ended prematurely with her marriage to a businessman by her parents, who disapproved of her studying music. Some time after her marriage, she became reacquainted with a colleague from her time at the Paris Conservatoire who encouraged her to continue composing. It was also during this time that Bonis was accepted into and later became secretary of the "Société des compositeurs de musique" (SCM). Within this organization, Bonis collaborated with composers such as Massenet, Saint-Saëns, and Fauré. Additionally, she won two composition prizes within this society.

10/01/2026

We are so excited to present Jessie Montgomery's "Duo" for violin and cello! Oct. 16, 7pm, The Crewe Center for the Arts! Tickets are at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/
Jessie Montgomery is a GRAMMY® Award-winning composer, violinist, and educator whose work interweaves classical music with elements of vernacular music, improvisation, poetry, and social consciousness, establishing her as an acute interpreter of 21st-century American sound and experience. Named Performance Today’s 2025 Classical Woman of the Year, her profound works have been described as “turbulent, wildly colorful, and exploding with life” (The Washington Post), and are performed regularly by leading orchestras, ensembles, and soloists around the world.

A founding member of PUBLIQuartet and a former member of the Catalyst Quartet, Montgomery is a frequent and highly engaged collaborator with performing musicians, composers, choreographers, playwrights, poets, and visual artists alike. At the heart of Montgomery’s work is a deep sense of community enrichment and a desire to create opportunities for young artists and underrepresented composers to broaden audience experiences in classical music spaces.

Montgomery has been recognized with many prestigious awards and fellowships, including the Civitella Ranieri Fellowship, the Sphinx Medal of Excellence and Sphinx Virtuosi Composer-in-Residence, the Leonard Bernstein Award from the ASCAP Foundation, and Musical America’s 2023 Composer of the Year.

09/28/2026

Don't miss this performance of Brahms' Piano Trio in B major by the Portland Piano Trio! October 16, 7pm, Crewe Center for the Arts. Tickets are at https://porttix.com/whats-on/an-ode-to-friendship/
"Brahms’s Piano Trio in B major is a work both young and old. Brahms was only 19 when he published it in 1854 but more than 30 years later, when the Simrock publishing house acquired the rights from Breitkopf & Härtel, he was offered the chance to make revisions. He accepted, and in 1889 took sheep-cutting shears to large swathes of every movement except the Scherzo with the aim of reining in what he considered the “youthful excesses” of the work’s original version.
The result is a stereoscopic view of the composer both at the very start of his career and in his mature years. What is clear is that the mature composer’s taste for rich, low piano textures was present from the very beginning. The piano introduction to the first movement Allegro con brio hardly strays a few notes above middle C before the cello enters with a broad, almost anthem-like main theme in the baritone range, soon joined by the violin in a glorious duet."-Donald G. Gíslason 2019