Oregon Coast Music Festival Events
© Sue Barton
History of the Oregon Coast Music Festival
The Oregon Coast Music Association, sponsor of the Oregon
Coast Music Festival, is a community-run nonprofit corporation whose mission is
"to present an annual classical music festival of the highest professional
caliber and to support a varied range of year-round musical performances and
education activities."
Founded in 1979, the Oregon Coast Music Association has a twenty-two year
history of organizing and presenting top-quality symphonic and chamber music in
the largest population center on the Oregon Coast -an area which otherwise has
meager access to live performances of classical music, and no string programs
in its public schools for training in performance or appreciation. In addition,
the Music Association has responded to the demand for a variety of music with
quality performances of acoustic jazz, bluegrass, ethnic and historically-inspired
music, and other genres which reach beyond commercially available styles.
The Association presents small ensemble performances and educational programs
throughout the year, with the support of community musicians and teachers. As a
holiday tradition, their regional choir and chamber orchestra presents Handel's
Messiah in mid- December.
Each January they take an extensive music-in-the-schools program, the Kinder
Konzert series, to more than 2700 Coos County elementary students. This year the Association is developing with
Southwestern Oregon Community College's Department of Music a free series of
narrated and illustrated live music performances surveying the history of
Western music from the age of the cathedrals to the 20th century. Performances in this series are hosted by
Coos Bay Public Library and Southwestern.
The culmination of the Music Association's season is the Oregon Coast Music
Festival, which is presented in venues in Coos Bay, North Bend and neighboring
communities the last two full weeks of July each year.
The Oregon Coast Music Festival began in Coos Bay in 1979 as the Haydn
Festival, founded by Charles Heiden, founder/conductor of the Salem Symphony.
The first three festivals were weekend events employing orchestra members from
the local community and around the state. Haydn's 250th birthday in 1982
provided the occasion to expand the musical horizons of the festival. Gary
McLaughlin, concert master of the 1981 Festival Orchestra, became the festival
music director and in the following year the Oregon Coast Music Festival and
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