Composer David Schiff. (Courtesy of David Schiff)

Classical clarinetist David Shifrin recently commissioned Portland composer David Schiff to write a piece for Shifrin to play at Chamber Music Northwest's annual summer festival. After Schiff began, he asked Shifrin for suggestions. "I'd like a Baroque aria," the clarinetist replied. "I already started it," Schiff said. "We're on the same wavelength."

No wonder. Shifrin and Schiff have been partners in music since shortly after the Bronx-born composer came to Portland to teach at Reed College in 1980. The following summer, he discovered chamber music producer Chamber Music Northwest and showed some of his scores to Shifrin, who had just begun a 40-year tenure as the group's artistic director. Shifrin asked Schiff to adapt music from Schiff's opera "Gimpel the Fool" into a chamber music work and programmed it for the organization's 1982 summer festival. It's become Schiff's most-performed piece.

Shifrin and other Chamber Music Northwest musicians will play it again April 25 in a concert commemorating Schiff's retirement from Reed this spring and Shifrin's upcoming retirement as Chamber Music Northwest's artistic director. Reed will also honor Schiff with an April 23 concert of his music.

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Composer David Schiff speaks about his arrangement of Duke Ellington’s "Ducal Suite" at the 2017 Chamber Music Northwest summer festival. (Courtesy of Chamber Music Northwest)

Schiff, Oregon’s best-known living composer and probably the American composer most accomplished at creating viable classical-jazz hybrids, is also one of the country’s major composers of Jewish music for classical forces. Other aspects of Schiff’s New York upbringing continue to permeate his music, including show tunes. “The biggest influence on my music is (Broadway composer) Richard Rodgers,” Schiff declares.

He started playing piano at age 4 and often ventured into New York jazz clubs during high school and college, hearing legends like Louis Armstrong, Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, whose music left a lasting mark on his own.

Hearing a recording of Aaron Copland’s “Billy the Kid” at age 9 made him want to be a composer, and studying with American composer Elliott Carter led ultimately to writing three books about him, the most recent published last year.

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David Schiff conducts an ensemble preparing the 2007 world premiere of his piece Nonet for Four Clarinets, String Quartet and Double Bass. (Stephanie Yao)

Moving to Portland gave him a rare outlet he compares to that enjoyed by 18th-century master Joseph Haydn, who was employed and housed by an Austrian prince who funded his orchestra and compositions. “Haydn had Esterházy and I had Chamber Music Northwest,” Schiff says. “Not only did they commission and perform my music, but David Shifrin let me do whatever I wanted,” even if it involved unusual instruments like saxophone or techniques like jazzy improvisation.

“He’s become more or less our de facto composer-in-residence,” says Shifrin. Schiff has also composed for the Oregon Symphony, Third Angle New Music, Fear No Music and other Oregon music institutions.

“I think he’s widely regarded and recognized for being an excellent composer and great musical thinker,” adds Shifrin, who has been part of New York’s music scene for decades. “But on the other hand, I don’t think he’s widely recognized enough. I do wish more people would play his music. .... He is right up there in terms of quality of his music and ability to appeal to both musicians and audiences.”

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David Schiff rehearses his composition "Singing in the Dark," inspired by the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, with the Miami String Quartet in 2002. (Marv Bondarowicz)

Schiff has also excelled at writing about music for general audiences, publishing in The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Nation and elsewhere. He’s authored books on Duke Ellington and George Gershwin.

That ability to explain music in clear and entertaining terms has made him a popular lecturer at Reed — and not just to music majors. Last term, he taught a course exploring the concept of rhythm in musical genres throughout history and around the world. Only one student was a classical musician. And this month he lectured about Ellington to the freshman humanities seminar.

The real culmination of his Reed career comes in next week’s concerts. Schiff describes them as comprising “pieces I wanted to hear, performed by players I wanted to hear.”

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David Schiff at the grand piano at the Temple Beth Israel administration building in 2001. (Benjamin Brink)

The April 23 show features works about peace and love. Reed College’s Collegium Musicum choir sings “Peace,” which sets texts from the Bible’s Book of Isaiah, including the famous verses about beating swords into plowshares. “All About Love” sets texts by gay and straight men and women spanning 700 years, starting with Petrarch and ending with 20th-century American poet Elizabeth Bishop. The show also includes a pair of New York vocalists, mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn and tenor Thomas Glenn.

Chinn returns for the April 25 concert featuring music from Schiff's 1997 opera "Vashti, or The Whole Megillah," a retelling of the Old Testament Book of Esther from the perspective of the disobedient first wife of the King of Persia. The concert also features "Songs from Adolescence," which Schiff calls "the turning point," explaining, "Everything in my music came together, including the rock element, the jazz element, klezmer," and classical techniques like counterpoint. The concert closes with that first Schiff composition performed at Chamber Music Northwest — the "Divertimento"" from "Gimpel the Fool."

As for that new clarinet concerto, Shifrin and colleagues will play it July 6 at this summer’s Chamber Music Northwest festival.

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David Schiff in 1981, shortly after he joined the Reed College music faculty. (Helen Fernandez)

Schiff hopes to write five more chamber concertos to reach the traditional baroque set of six. He’d love to see one of his operas get a full staging by a major opera company. And he wants to continue writing solo pieces for young, “not very advanced” pianists, a project he began last year with Portland Piano International.

As one chapter of revealing the magic of music ends for Schiff, another is just getting underway.

Celebrating David Schiff

When: "Love Songs," 8 p.m. Tuesday, April 23, and "Shifrin and Friends Play Schiff," Thursday, April 25.

Where: Reed College, Kaul Auditorium, 3203 S.E. Woodstock Blvd., Portland.

Tickets: Free.