Artwise, as one might say, Portland, Oregon, is a special place. It is the home of a statewide symphony orchestra, its own opera company, a visual arts museum, a historical museum, various kinds of theater, and all the mutually supportive enterprises which go to make up what is locally called an Art-quake. Even—or especially—the incoming Portland mayor has joined the parade: Bud Clark is none other than the sensitive soul who posed, backside to the camera and rain coat flung open before an art object, for that memorable poster captioned “Expose yourself to art.” How’s that for class?

At the present moment all the Portland artshearts are throbbing to the beat of a new space for symphony concerts. Dubbed the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in honor of its major donor, this edifice is the old Paramount Theater, a movie house dating from the late 1920s, that halcyon era when plaster replicas of the interior of the Alhambra were just the thing for giving tone to the latest exploits of Rudolph Valentino and Douglas Fairbanks. Naturally the excitement over Schnitzer Hall is integrated into the whole Portland renaissance; even the signs on the temporary fences closing off construction areas outside the hall bear an injunction perhaps not unrelated to the mayor-elect’s offering to art: “Flaunt Your Civic Pride,” these signs urge those timid souls lacking in urban commitment.

So many caring instincts so bounteously displayed seemed to require (of at least this listener) a witness to what is