The last days of summer: 45th Parallel's backyard concert of Philip Glass string quartets * Oregon ArtsWatch

""The music had an important role to play in the film. The score I composed was not meant as a musical decoration of the film. It was, in fact, used to help articulate the film's structure...particularly with Mishima, I think that integrating the composition of image and music into a unified endeavor can provide the most powerful tool for a filmmaker.""

""The concert took place on a modest green, large enough for a few arcs of chairs around the quartet. Surrounding this yard were large rhododendron bushes, overgrown rosemary plants, a low fence, moss-covered statuettes and hidden string lights. One could hear echoes of the strings from around the street corner, and pedestrians craned their necks to see what was happening.""

""Blessinger and Medellin's black-and-white Aussie, Star, appreciated this casual atmosphere, roaming around the yard with a tennis ball in her mouth. At one point Blessiner jokingly asked if the dog's owners would deal with her. He also remarked, \"John Cage would be very pleased,\" with some street noise filtering into the performance. (Though at a different point, he seemed nonplussed at some neighbor dogs barking, glaring up from his score to no one in particular.)""

On September 28, 45th Parallel Universe presented the season's final outdoor garden performance at Ron Blessinger and Ann Medellin's yard, featuring a string quartet playing Philip Glass's Third and Fifth String Quartets. Blessinger played violin alongside Shin-young Kwon, violist Maya Hoffman and cellist Nancy Ives. The setting was a modest green ringed by rhododendron bushes, overgrown rosemary, a low fence, moss-covered statuettes and hidden string lights, where echoes of the quartet reached the street and pedestrians paused to listen. Blessinger's dog Star roamed with a tennis ball while neighborhood sounds intermittently filtered into the music. Glass's Third Quartet draws from his score to Paul Schrader's 1985 film Mishima and emphasizes integrating music and image to articulate the film's structure.

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