“For almost any type of music, there’s a bar in Portland where you can experience it live…. Classical music lovers have long been excluded,” writes Sam Pape in Tuesday’s (7/5) Portland Monthly (OR). “Luckily for us bar-crawling Beethoven-heads, that’s about to change. Enter: Mendelssohn’s, Portland’s first classical music-themed bar… It will feature live chamber music three nights a week, to be enjoyed alongside classic cocktails…. Mendelssohn’s is the brainchild of Lisa Lipton, who happens to be a direct descendant of the OG Romantic-era German composer Felix Mendelssohn. Lipton [a clarinetist] cut her teeth in the service industry for over a decade at beloved late-night haunt Rimsky-Korsakoffee House, and currently serves as the executive director of both the Newport Symphony Orchestra and Opera Theater Oregon.… Like so many of us, Lipton spent the early months of the pandemic exploring the world of cocktails [to be] featured on Mendelssohn’s cocktail menu, including ‘Bach Talk,’… and ‘The Red Mendelssohn,’ a blood orange Manhattan inspired by Felix Mendelssohn’s long-lost Stradivarius.… Weekly performances will include classical guitarists, string and wind quartets, soloists, and more…. ‘It’s an invitation into the world of what the after-hours are like with classical musicians,’ Lipton explains.”
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