Keith Clark conducts the Portland SummerFest Orchestra
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Artistic Director
Ruth Dobson received the 2007 Governor’s Arts Award from Governor Kulongoski for her work in the field of opera and opera education. She is currently the Artistic Director of Portland SummerFest
and Director of the Apprentice Program at the Astoria
Music Festival. Nationally, she is on the board of directors of the National Opera Association. For ten years, she
was a Founder and the Artistic Director of Bel
Canto Northwest Vocal Institute in Portland. She joined the voice faculty at the University of Oregon in 2006
after retiring from Portland State University where for 28 years she was professor of music and Director of PSU Opera. Under her
direction, PSU Opera productions of Le nozze di Figaro in 2000 and Don Giovanni in 2003 were awarded first place in the opera production competition of the National Opera
Association. Her many current and former voice students are singing professionally throughout the United States and Europe. She has been a frequent soprano soloist with most of the major performing
arts organizations in the Northwest, including the Oregon Symphony, Portland Opera, Portland
Youth Philharmonic, Abbey Bach Festival, Britt Festivals, Astoria
Music Festival,
and the Festival of New Music at both the University of Oregon and in Seattle. She received her Master's Degree in Vocal Performance from the University
of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music,
where she held a graduate fellowship as an opera coach/accompanist. She returned to the University of Cincinnati to give master classes in vocal chamber music as part of their Grandin
Festival.
Conductor
Keith Clark is Principal Guest Conductor of the Siberian Chamber Orchestra in Omsk, Russia, Conductor of the Amadeus Opera Ensemble in Salzburg, and Founding Conductor Laureate of the Pacific
Symphony in Southern California. He is Founding Music Director & Conductor of the Astoria Music Festival, which recently
completed its sixth season of presenting opera, orchestra, and chamber music at the historic Liberty Theater in Astoria. In 2007, he directed the U.S. State Department’s American Music Festival
in Chisinau, Moldova, conducted The Marriage of Figaro in Salzburg and Rigoletto for Portland SummerFest; and in the fall of 2007 led a highly-acclaimed first Russian production
of West Side Story at the famed Globus Theater in Novosibirsk. He is featured on over thirty recordings with the London Philharmonic, Vienna
Chamber Orchestra, Slovak State Philharmonic, Les Concerts du Monde Baroque Orchestra, Czech Radio Symphony Orchestra, Korean Symphony Orchestra, and the Pacific Symphony Orchestra. His CD’s
have received Grammy nominations, “Record of the Year” and “Classical Hall of Fame” awards, and Billboard Bestseller listings. A resident of Vienna and London for a decade, he appeared in Vienna’s
Musikverein and Konzerthaus, Salzburg’s Mozarteum, Royal Philharmonic Hall and other historic sites and concertized with leading soloists, among them violinists Menuhin, Szeryng, Milstein and Ricci,
pianists Arrau, Gutierrez, and Browning, cellists Starter, Rose and Harrell, and singers Thomas Hampson, Anna Moffo, Roberta Peters, Dorothy Kirsten, and Hans Hotter. He founded Southern California’s
Pacific Symphony Orchestra and built it into the nation’s fastest growing professional orchestra, bringing it to international attention through recordings, broadcasts, and appearances on BBC and
American television.-
SummerFest Board of Directors
- Jocelyn Bates, President
- Steve Bachelder, V. President
- Ann C. Carter, V. President
- Laurie Hungerford Flint, V. President
- William J. Friesen, V. President
- Scott Wyse, V. President
- Darlyn Jablonski, Recording Secretary
- Elizabeth S. Duffett, Secretary for Correspondence and Development
- Susan Payson, Treasurer