Spring Forward Benefit Dinner
We’re pleased to share that, due to a tremendous response, this event is now sold out. To be added to the waitlist, please contact Jessy Baros Friedt, Development Director, at 503-546-0184 or jessyf@cmnw.org. Thank you!
You’re cordially invited to join Chamber Music Northwest for Spring Forward, a pre-concert benefit dinner celebrating the future of chamber music.
On Saturday, March 28, we’ll gather in the Billiard Room at Sentinel Hotel for a social reception followed by a relaxed yet elegant dinner. During the evening, you’ll hear directly from CMNW leadership and the artists we work with about the real impact of our Education & Community Engagement programs, and why this work matters now more than ever. The program will feature musical moments by local students, along with reflections from Artistic Director Emeritus David Shifrin and Protégé Project Alumnus Graeme Steele Johnson, offering a personal look at the artists, students, and programs that your support sustains. An opportunity to give will be presented toward the end of the program for those who feel inspired to deepen their support.
After dinner, we’ll stroll just three blocks to First Baptist Church for the evening’s concert, Loeffler’s Lost Octet, Debussy & Schumann, where we will continue to celebrate the history and future of chamber music.
All proceeds from Spring Forward support Chamber Music Northwest’s Education & Community Engagement programs.
Artists
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David Shifrin
Clarinet & Artistic Director Emeritus 1981–2020
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David Shifrin began performing with Chamber Music Northwest in 1978 and served as its Artistic Director from 1981 to 2020. He has performed with the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center since 1982 and served as its Artistic Director from 1992 to 2004.
Shifrin received Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Career Grant and the Avery Fisher Prize, as well as numerous awards and prizes competitions and organizations worldwide.
David Shifrin is the Samuel S. Sanford Professor in the Practice of Clarinet at the Yale School of Music where he teaches a studio of graduate-level clarinetists and coaches chamber music ensembles. He is also the Artistic Director of Yale’s Oneppo Chamber Music Society and the Yale in New York concert series. Previously, Shifrin served on the faculties of the Juilliard School, the University of Southern California, the University of Michigan, the Cleveland Institute of Music, and the University of Hawaii. He has appeared with many of the major orchestras in the United States and abroad and has served as principal clarinetist with the Cleveland Orchestra, American Symphony Orchestra, Los Angeles Chamber Orchestra, and the Symphony Orchestras of New Haven, Honolulu, and Dallas. Shifrin also continues to broaden the clarinet repertoire by commissioning and championing more than 100 works of 20th and 21st-century American composers. Shifrin’s recordings have consistently garnered praise and awards including three Grammy nominations and “Record of the Year” from Stereo Review.
Shifrin is represented by CM Artists in New York and performs on Backun clarinets and Légère reeds.
Upcoming Concerts & Events
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Graeme Steele Johnson
Clarinet
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Praised as “technically and interpretively impeccable and passionately communicative” (Boston Musical Intelligencer), Graeme Steele Johnson is an artist of uncommon imagination and versatility.
The clarinetist, curator and “musical detective” (New York Classical Review) garnered international attention for his rediscovery and reconstruction of a 125-year-old octet by Charles Martin Loeffler, profiled in a full-page spread by The Washington Post. Released on his debut album, Forgotten Sounds (Delos/Outhere Music), Johnson’s world-premiere recording of the work was named one of The New York Times’s Best Classical Music Albums of 2024, nominated for a Gramophone Classical Music Award, and critically acclaimed by BBC Music Magazine, The Times of London, and many others. Johnson led the octet’s first present-day performances at the Library of Congress, Morgan Library, Harvard Musical Association, Phoenix Chamber Music Festival, Emerald City Music, and other concert series around the country over three seasons of touring.
Since 2022, Johnson has served as the clarinetist of the award-winning quintet WindSync. Additional recent appearances include the Ravinia, Bridgehampton, Rockport, Moab, and Orcas Island Chamber Music Festivals and performances with the Miró, Balourdet, Aeolous, Callisto, and KASA Quartets, as well as the Twelfth Night, Copland House, and New York New Music Ensembles. Admired for his creative curation and engaging communication, he has presented a TEDx talk comparing Mozart and Seinfeld, authored chamber arrangements heard around the world, and in 2026 will assume the position of artistic director of the Onstage Offstage Chamber Music Festival in Houston.
Under the tutelage of Charles Neidich and Kofi Agawu, Johnson earned a doctoral degree from the CUNY Graduate Center, where his research won the Elebash Dissertation Award. Previously, he earned two master’s degrees from the Yale School of Music, where he studied with David Shifrin and Ricardo Morales, and completed undergraduate study at The University of Texas at Austin with Nathan Williams.