PENDLETON — Due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the Oregon East Symphony has announced it will be canceling the remainder of its 2019-20 season, after the online presentation of its annual Spring Chamber Music Concert on Saturday, April 18.

The cancellation affects the previously postponed “Winter Moons” concert, scheduled for March 14 in Pendleton and March 15 in Hermiston, and the season finale, “Blow it Up, Start Again,” scheduled for a Pendleton performance on June 13. Symphony staff and board of directors volunteers have been reaching out to season ticket holders and individual concert ticket holders to inform them of the development.

To close out the season this year, OES’s annual Spring Chamber Music Festival will be held online, streamed Saturday, April 18 at 6:30 p.m. from the front page of their website, www.OregonEastSymphony.org. The online concert will be free to view for anyone with an internet connection.

Musicians at this year’s concert will produce HD video recordings of themselves performing chamber works from their homes or private studios. These prerecorded performances will be edited together into the video that will be streamed on OES’s website.

Performances this year include OES violist Aurora Torres on “Two Rhapsodies for Oboe, Viola, and Piano” by Charles Martin Tornov Loeffler, with Ryan Klein (oboe) and Chad Spears (piano); OES conductor and artistic director Dr. Beau Benson presenting a selection of classical guitar repertoire from 16th and 19th century Spain; OES assistant concertmaster Viet Block and OES principal cellist Zach Banks performing “Duo for Violin and Cello, Op. 7” by Zoltán Kodály; mezzo-soprano Alexis McCarthy performing Saint-Saëns’s aria “Mon cœur s’ouvre à ta voix” with piano accompaniment by Rachel Pariseau; and Pendleton-born Hollywood composer Chris Thomas providing a film scoring performance.

Even regular OES concert emcees Bill Mayclin and Murray Dunlap will prerecord their preconcert announcements in their trademark tuxedos.

A feature of the Chamber Music Festival that can’t be replicated in a virtual environment is the spread of hearty hors d’oeurves and wine and beer provided by OES’s volunteer board of directors. This year the board of directors will be compiling a recipe book of hors d’oeuvres that will be electronically submitted to those on the symphony mailing list prior to the concert.

Viewers can prepare these recipes on their own to enjoy as they watch and listen to the concert from the comfort of their own homes. The Great Pacific and Prodigal Son Brewery will respectively be providing wine and beer pairings for the recipes. This free concert is generously sponsored by Collins Law Office, Dr. George and Sue Nelson, and Sylvia Clawson.

Meanwhile, OES Education Director Zach Banks has been adapting as much of the symphony’s educational activities as possible to an online environment. The Oregon East Symphony Youth Orchestra, the Symphony’s intermediate level youth orchestra, kicked off its first “OESYO Virtual Jam Session” last week. The goal of the weekly online classes, held at the same time as regular OESYO rehearsals, is to sustain student engagement through playing assignments and an in-depth look at music theory and history surrounding the pieces scheduled to be performed at the OESYO’s Spring Concert.

Banks has also been emailing students in both OESYO and Preludes, the beginner level preparatory orchestra, links to useful, free online content like free streaming concert recordings by the Berlin Philharmonic, online master classes, and free sheet music suitable for participants’ skill levels. For the Preludes Orchestra, conductor Melinda Tovey has been producing short “play-along” videos for each of the students in her ensemble.

Banks has also been organizing online content for Symphony Strings, the beginning strings after-school activity produced in collaboration with the Pendleton School District. Under normal circumstances, more than 70 fourth- and fifth-grade students are bussed to the Pendleton High School music department twice a week for group lessons in violin, viola, or cello.

Since that is not possible, Banks, along with violin instructors Melinda Tovey and Viet Block, viola instructor Heidi Haug, and high school-age teaching assistants Jenna Harrison and Gabrielle Bedolla, have been producing and distributing short instructional videos corresponding to students’ method books on a weekly basis. Lead teacher and PSD liaison Emily Cary has assisted in the organizing efforts.

Another educational activity OES provides that is moving online is OES’s private lesson financial assistance program. OES will cover partial or the full cost of private strings instruction with an approved instructor for students who lack the financial means to afford private lessons on their own. Banks, Block, Cary and Tovey all have private students being served by the program and are now moving into a virtual individual lesson environment by utilizing video conferencing services like Skype and Zoom.

OES’s latest educational project, providing strings as an arts elective at Nixya’awii Community School on the Umatilla Indian Reservation, is also moving into an online classroom setting with classes being conducted via Zoom conference.

For more information about the Oregon East Symphony and its concert and education programing, email the office at info@oregonEastSymphony.org. The office at 345 S.W. Fourth St. in Pendleton is closed until further notice.