was a center for contemporary art in Southeast Portland, Oregon. It was led by a desire to support artists, propose new modes of production, and stimulate the ongoing public discourse around art. This website serves as an archive of Yale Union’s programming from 2011 through 2021.

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MICHAEL STIRLING

EV

A Performance
Saturday, April 20, 10pm
$10 – Tickets available at the door

For the last thirty years, Michael Stirling has been a disciple of the Indian classical vocalist Pandit Pran Nath (1918–1996) and a student of the American minimalist composer Terry Riley (b. 1935). On Saturday, April 20, Stirling will perform three Hindustani ragas. It is easiest, perhaps, to think of a raga as a tonal framework for composition and improvisation. A raga is not fixed, but is created through time by a lengthy evolutionary process. Each Hindustani (North Indian) raga is assigned to specific times of the day (or night) and specific seasons.

At ten o’clock, Stirling will perform three ragas (Raga Mian Ki Malhar, Raga Malkauns, and Raga Lalit) that will last well into the morning. He will be accompanied by David Jacob (tabla), Peia Luzzi (tambura), and Lucy Stirling (tambura).

Michael Stirling currently teaches at Lewis and Clark College. He has taught at Marylhurst University, University of Portland, Portland State University, and Reed College. As a performer he has accompanied Pandit Pran Nath and Terry Riley in classes and concerts at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas, and in India at the dhargha of Sufi Hazarat Inayat Khan in New Dehli. Stirling also served as a member of the Portland Center for Visual Art’s performance committee during the 1980s, when he first met Pandit Pran Nath in 1983 during his guru’s residency.

A film by William Farley, 1986. Color, 28 min.