A Year of Trees

A Year of Trees A Portland-based project connecting people to nature, the arts, and one another.

Created by Kimberly Osberg, Fear No Music, Chatter PDX, the Delgani String Quartet, and the Portland Fruit Tree Project.

04/14/2026

The Linfield University music department chair discusses his latest documentary score "Keep Quiet and Forgive" and the relationship between film music and concert music.

🎉 Thanks to the generosity of individual donors from our community, A Year of Trees is able to move forward!!🥰 We are de...
04/07/2026

🎉 Thanks to the generosity of individual donors from our community, A Year of Trees is able to move forward!!

🥰 We are deeply grateful to everyone for their support at this early stage of the project. We have a LOT more to announce and can't wait to share - more from us soon! 🌲🎶🎻

🚨 TODAY is our deadline to reach our goal - and we're almost there!! 😍🎶🌲 12 new pieces, each inspired by a different tre...
04/06/2026

🚨 TODAY is our deadline to reach our goal - and we're almost there!! 😍

🎶🌲 12 new pieces, each inspired by a different tree. The project will connect these new works from Portland-based composers with local environmental organizations to educate, motivate, and activate communities, helping to protect trees in our region—both urban & wild.

Visit YEAR OF TREES🌳ORG to learn more and support our project today!

A great read on one connection between trees & music from our friends at Portland Fruit Tree Project!
03/31/2026

A great read on one connection between trees & music from our friends at Portland Fruit Tree Project!

🤩 We're almost to our goal! 🎶If you've been waiting to support this project, now is great time to help us meet the finis...
03/31/2026

🤩 We're almost to our goal! 🎶

If you've been waiting to support this project, now is great time to help us meet the finish line - we are working to meet our goal by APRIL 6!!

Read more about the project below, and help us spread the word about A YEAR OF TREES! 🌲

Learn more & support our work at year of trees🌳org

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | BORA YOON 🎶✏ ABOUT BORA:// BORA YOON is a Korean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist wh...
03/18/2026

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | BORA YOON 🎶

✏ ABOUT BORA:
// BORA YOON is a Korean-American composer, vocalist, and sound artist who conjures audiovisual soundscapes using digital devices, voice, and instruments from a variety of cultures and historical centuries to formulate a storytelling through music, movement, and sound. Called “Exquisite” by The New York Times, Yoon has been featured on the front-page of the Wall-Street Journal, WIRE magazine, TED, and the National Endowment for the Arts podcast.

As a performer/composer, Yoon has presented her work around the globe at Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, BAM, Visiones Sonoras (Mexico), Festival of World Cultures (Poland), Nam Jun Paik Museum (South Korea), PROTOTYPE Opera Theater Now Festival — and served as artist in residence with the Experimental Media Performing Arts Center (EMPAC), The Hermitage, and TED Fellows.

As a composer, she has been commissioned by So Percussion, Alarm Will Sound, Cabrillo Festival of Contemporary Music, Voices of Ascension Chorus and Orchestra with select scores published by Boosey & Hawkes, Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA), and SozoMart, and recordings distributed by Innova Recordings, Naxos, and Journal of Popular Noise.

Yoon’s music has provided the live score for Haruki Murakami’s Wind Up Bird Chronicle and additional film score for Apple TV+’s Pachinko. Her music has been awarded by the New York Foundation of the Arts (Music/Sound), Foundation for Contemporary Art, Asian American Arts Alliance, Princeton University, Fromm Foundation at Harvard Music, Barlow Endowment, Sorel Organization, and Opera America

🌲 TREES THAT INSPIRE BORA:
Ginko biloba
Bristlecone Pine
Magnolia grandiflora

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌳ORG!

🌳 MEET THE COMPOSERS | WILLIAM CAMPBELL 🎶✏ ABOUT WILLIAM:Composer and pianist William Campbell, Musician creates emotive...
03/16/2026

🌳 MEET THE COMPOSERS | WILLIAM CAMPBELL 🎶

✏ ABOUT WILLIAM:
Composer and pianist William Campbell, Musician creates emotive and richly dimensional music that elevates listeners with its prismatic beauty. Known for the “sophisticated melodic spark and rising orchestral mood of his lauded soundtrack work,” (The Echo) Campbell embraces atmospheric post-minimalism with a signature focus on balanced facets of color.

Campbell's music for films includes work nominated for two Oscars (Academy Awards) in 2021 and 2019, an Emmy nomination in 2020. His recent scores have earned the awards for best film score in 2020 by the Iowa Motion Pictures Association, and best original score at the 2021 (International) Luminous Frames Festival. Additional awards include those from ASCAP, Kennedy Center American Collegiate Theater Festival, Penfield Music Commission, Waging Peace, and multiple teaching institutions. In 2021 he released the critically acclaimed album of solo piano music, All In Due Time, and in 2023 the album for piano & electronics titled Together We Rise debuted at #11 on the Billboard Classical Crossover Chart. He is also a sought-after composer for orchestral, chamber, and vocal music, and is regularly commissioned to write new works by various organizations every year. As a performer, he has led multiple new music groups and has played with orchestras and as a soloist in North and South America.

Campbell recently moved back west and currently lives in the Southwest hills of Portland, Oregon, and is the Department Chair and Director of Compositional Activities at Linfield University.

🌲TREES THAT INSPIRE WILLIAM:
Oak
Douglas Fir
Maple

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌳ORG!

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | KIMBERLY OSBERG 🎶✏️ ABOUT KIMBERLY:Kimberly Osberg is a Portland-based composer from Eau Claire, ...
03/13/2026

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | KIMBERLY OSBERG 🎶

✏️ ABOUT KIMBERLY:
Kimberly Osberg is a Portland-based composer from Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Her projects have included dance, film, environmental sound installations, instrumental theatre, plays, opera, visual art, award ceremonies, and stage combat, in addition to traditional concert settings. Her music has been described as “brilliant,” “highly-engaging,” “wonderfully suspenseful,” “intensely colorful,” and “wonderfully humorous and witty” and has received acclaim from academic, commercial, and public audiences alike.

While Kimberly is especially honored to have collaborated with musicians from the National Symphony, Dallas, Atlanta, Oregon, and Indianapolis orchestras, she is proud to write music for musicians at all stages of their careers—including residencies and premieres with the Minnesota Music Educators Association All-State Orchestra, New Jersey Youth Symphony, and more. She currently serves as the Composer-in-Residence for Chatter PDX (2025-2027).

Outside of writing music, Kimberly is also a passionate creative placemaker. During the pandemic, she created five low-budget commissioning projects that empowered over 60 soloists and chamber ensembles to commission substantial works—many for their first time. In partnership with Fear No Music, the Delgani Quartet, Portland Fruit Tree Project, and Chatter PDX, Kimberly’s latest project, A Year of Trees, will commission new string quartets from 12 composers in support of forest conservation in the PNW.

🌳 TREES THAT INSPIRE KIMBERLY:
Weeping Willow
Quaking Aspen
Coastal Redwood

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌲ORG!

🌳 MEET THE COMPOSERS | RYAN FRANCIS 🎶 ✏️ ABOUT RYAN:The music of Portland-born composer Ryan Francis first gained recogn...
03/11/2026

🌳 MEET THE COMPOSERS | RYAN FRANCIS 🎶

✏️ ABOUT RYAN:
The music of Portland-born composer Ryan Francis first gained recognition in the mid-2000s through performer advocates such as pianist Vicky Chow, whose incisive performances of his piano music brought the attention of composer John Zorn, who offered Francis a record release on his label, Tzadik.

Notable concert music commissions include High Line for American Composers Orchestra, Cloudscape for Camerata Jeonnam Orchestra, Concerto for Piano and Chamber Orchestra for Metropolis Ensemble, Sylvan for the Banff Centre of Canada, Akhet for the El Sakia String Orchestra, Nightwalk for Fear No Music Ensemble, Album for Guitar for Mattias Schulstad and Pittsburgh New Music Ensemble, and Voynich Transcriptions for Chatter New Mexico.

Francis has collaborated with New York’s Metropolis Ensemble for over a decade including numerous commissions and programming credits, most recently as a contributor to the infinite online composition project Flame Keepers and as a co-curator of the Free Assembly online festival.

Francis is assistant professor at Pacific University where he teaches music technology, music theory, and world music studies. He holds a B.M. in music composition from the University of Michigan and an M.M. and D.M.A. in music composition from the Juilliard School.

🌲 TREES THAT INSPIRE RYAN:
Olive
Garoé
Magnolia

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌳ORG!

🎶 MEET THE COMPOSERS | CYNTHIA STILLMAN GERDES 🌳 ✏️ ABOUT CYNTHIA:Cynthia Stillman Gerdes writes mostly chamber music fo...
03/09/2026

🎶 MEET THE COMPOSERS | CYNTHIA STILLMAN GERDES 🌳

✏️ ABOUT CYNTHIA:
Cynthia Stillman Gerdes writes mostly chamber music for traditional instruments in a light contemporary style. She grew up in the northwest US, has been musically active in Seattle, San Francisco, Eugene, and Coos Bay. She found piano teaching a delight, both in her private studio and at several colleges, including a twenty year stint at Portland State University. Her compositions have been performed in Oregon by fEARnoMUSIC, at the Performers’ Choice Concert at the Ernest Bloch Festival Composer Symposium, at Portland State University, University of Portland, the Saltwater Unitarian Choir, several Cascadia Composers concerts, and a couple of her songs were performed in Paris, France. She is most grateful for the bits of mentoring she’s received along the way, from Homer Keller, Eric Funk, a couple of lessons with Tomas Svoboda, and a philosophical and musical influence from Charles Ives and Lukas Foss. Special gratitude goes to the performers she worked with who offered their input, and for the friends, when hearing the first versions of her music, will tell her where their mind begins to wander. Cynthia is past vice president of Cascadia Composers and is a founding member of Crazy Jane Composers. This wonderful women’s group happened to be named after one of her compositions “Crazy Jane,” thanks to W. B.Yeats’ poetry that used that character’s name. It’s a piece that is included on her “Solo and Chamber Music” CD released in 2011.

🌲 TREES THAT INSPIRE CYNTHIA:
Apple
Cherry
Hemlock

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌳ORG!

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | JAMES T. SHIELDS 🎶✏️ ABOUT JAMES:Hailed as “the best clarinetist in Oregon,” (Oregon ArtsWatch), ...
03/07/2026

🌲 MEET THE COMPOSERS | JAMES T. SHIELDS 🎶

✏️ ABOUT JAMES:
Hailed as “the best clarinetist in Oregon,” (Oregon ArtsWatch), James Shields is a performer, composer, educator, and arts leader with over 25 years of experience in presenting events of exquisite artistry, dynamic programming, and deep community connections.

James is the Associate Artistic Director of Chatter ABQ and the Artistic Director & General Manager for Chatter PDX. A weekly music and poetry series, the organizations have grown exponentially over the past two decades, expanding to more than 100 concerts per year in Albuquerque and Santa Fe, and 60 concerts per year in Portland. James recently completed 9 years of service with the Oregon Symphony as Principal Clarinetist, and has enjoyed numerous guest appearances with chamber music festivals and orchestras—including the Metropolitan Opera, Malaysian Philharmonic, Toronto, and Philadelphia orchestras, the National Ballet of Canada, Chamber Music Northwest, Aspen Music Festival, Willamette Valley Chamber Music Festival, and the Astoria Music Festival.

James maintains an active chamber music presence with Chatter PDX, ChatterAbq, fEARnoMUSIC, 45th Parallel Universe, and Third Angle New Music. James and his wife, violinist Emily Cole, were named the All Classical Radio Artists-in-Residence in both 2024 and 2025. James also teaches clarinet and coaches chamber music throughout the Portland region through his private studio and positions at Reed College, the Portland Youth Philharmonic, and the Metropolitan Youth Symphony.

🌳 TREES THAT INSPIRE JAMES:
Aspen
Yew
Live Oak

Learn more about our project at YEAR OF TREES🌲ORG!

Address

Portland, OR

Website

Alerts

Be the first to know and let us send you an email when A Year of Trees posts news and promotions. Your email address will not be used for any other purpose, and you can unsubscribe at any time.

Contact The Organization

Send a message to A Year of Trees:

Shortcuts

Share

Category