OFAM classical concert celebrates the nighttime.

Byline: Fred Crafts The Register-Guard

When it comes to making music, conductor James Paul believes night time is the right time.

His next concert for the Oregon Festival of American Music's American Symphonia is this Friday's appropriately titled "Night Music." It is simply loaded with works celebrating the night.

That's a time that seems to have been especially inspirational for artists of all kinds.

It's a time, Paul says, for "serenity, quietness and calmness. But on the other hand it's a time for asking those questions that maybe you don't ask during the course of daylight."

Choosing this program was difficult, he says, for there were so many choices. Exquisite nocturnes abound in the literature.

At last, he narrowed the list down to six works by four composers - W.A. Mozart, Antonin Dvorak, Colin McPhee and Samuel Barber.

While tie-ins to the theme are not always obvious with all the selections, the ink is as clear as a billboard with Mozart's famous ``Eine kleine Nachtmusik,'' K. 525, and in two pieces with the word "nocturne" in their titles, Dvorak's Nocturne for String Orchestra in B Major, Op. 40, and McPhee's Nocturne for Chamber Orchestra.

Where Mozart's toe-tapper will be familiar to most anyone, Dvorak's nocturne will be known by very few.

Rarely played, Paul calls it "one of the most beautiful pieces of Dvorak that he ever came up with. There's not a note wrong in it. It's opening and closing sections are magnificently beautiful, and it has a songlike middle section."

On the other hand, McPhee's Nocturne will be very different. Enthralled with the sound of a gamalan orchestra, the Canadian composer worked a trancelike mood through "a repetitiveness that we associate with minimalist music, but a repetitiveness due to the nature of percussion instruments. You get this hypnotic sense about it at times."

The program's second half is devoted to Barber's powerful works.

First up is "Dover Beach, Op. 3," a work for string quartet and baritone singer, to be sung Saturday by Sandy Naishtat. The piece is based on an 1867 poem by Matthew Arnold that begins, "The sea is calm to-night/The tide is full, the moon lies fair."

This "quiet" piece is followed by an even quieter one, the famous "Adagio for Strings," a popular string serenade often used at funerals for heads of state.

The concert will conclude with "Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Op. 24," a celebrated work for soprano and orchestra. Maria Jette will be the vocalist. The piece was written in 1947 to passages from James Agee's essay "A Death in the Family" that begins, "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee, in that time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child."

Paul sees a neat correlation between "the questioning and wonderment" that occurs in the poetry of "Dover Beach" and in the text of "Knoxville."

The concert's principals are:

Paul, who has been conductor and artistic adviser of OFAM since 1997 and is the principal guest conductor of Chicago's Grant Park concert program, the music director and conductor of the Oregon Coast Music Festival in Coos Bay and artistic adviser of the Tulsa Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jette, of Minnesota, is a frequent performer with OFAM and on Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" national radio program. She has performed recently with the Portland Baroque Orchestra, the Albany Pro Musica and the Kansas City Symphony.

Naishtat, of Eugene, is OFAM's finance manager and has appeared with the American Symphonia, Eugene Opera, Oregon Mozart Players, Eugene Vocal Arts Ensemble, Eugene Concert Choir, Oregon Bach Festival and Eugene Chamber Singers.

While the program is loaded with lovely "Night Music," Paul cautions that "it won't all sound the same. Each piece has its own personality."

Asked why the nighttime has been such a source of inspiration for artists, Paul answers, "Its like Alpha-Omega. Yin-Yang. There's light and there's dark. That's the way things are."

Fred Crafts can be reached at 338-2575 or fcrafts@guardnet .com.

CONCERT PREVIEW

Night Music

What: Works by W.A. Mozart, Antonin Dvorak, Colin McPhee and Samuel Barber will be played by OFAM's American Symphonia, conducted by James Paul

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday

Where: The John G. Shedd Institute for the Arts, 285 W. Broadway

How much: $12.50-$30.50, through OFAM ticket office (687-6526)

Pre-concert: ``OFAMily-Style Dinner,'' 6 p.m. Friday in The Shedd gym, $15.50; reservations: 687-6526