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This story has been updated with quotes from Lee Black, vice president of Portland Chamber Orchestra.
The Portland Chamber Orchestra has dissolved midway through its 79th season. In a statement posted to the organization’s website, PCO announced the cancellation of the season’s last two concerts, both scheduled at the Patricia Reser Center for the Arts in Beaverton. PCO announced its dissolution on its website on Feb. 5; its social media pages have not been updated since December 2025.
“The board thanks all those who have supported the PCO and its mission—an intimate symphony with infinite imagination—especially the patrons and musicians who have contributed their time and talents to this goal,” reads PCO’s statement.
Lee Black, PCO’s vice president, tells WW that the organization’s board decided to dissolve on Jan. 19. Black broadly attributed the choice to struggles related to pandemic recovery and funding cuts by the Trump administration, but spelled out specific struggles unique to the orchestra.
Black says that PCO has historically performed without a home venue, supported by small donations. After realizing that its New Year’s Eve concert at the Reser Center only left enough money to pay its immediate bills—with no money to support the rest of the season—Black says the board began the process of dissolution. This includes contacting Oregon’s attorney general and secretary of state’s offices, as well as grant agencies to determine if any awards needed to be returned. Short of a significant “high five-figure or low six-figure” infusion of cash, PCO should formally unwind in November, once it has paid some final expenses.
“It was really important for us to pay our bills, many of which go to human beings who are artists, who are musicians,” Black says. “It was really important for us to pay those bills, and we have done that. It was probably equally important for us to look ourselves in the face and go, ‘We can’t do this again.’”
Portland Chamber Orchestra was founded in 1946, according to the Oregon Historical Society, and grew to be the United States’ longest-running chamber orchestra. Boris Sirpo, an acclaimed conductor and composer born in Russia who had an esteemed career in Finland before World War II, started PCO with students from Lewis & Clark College. During Sirpo’s lifetime, PCO toured Europe performing for nobility. The orchestra’s most recent artistic director was Deanna Tham, who has conducted with the Oregon Symphony, Omaha Symphony and Jacksonville Symphony.
Black says that PCO struggled to overcome the sudden loss of its artistic director, Yaacov Bergman, who died in 2023 as the orchestra started recovering from shutdowns and debts incurred as a result.
“I’m so desperately sorry that [Tham]’s ideas for programming—which were fantastic and original—that people won’t get to hear that, and the whole board feels that way," she says.
The organization’s statement does not name the two canceled events, but WW had previously received press announcements for two 2026 events, both slated to take place at Reser Center: a March 3 Chinese New Year celebration, and Banner & Burden: Music and Spoken Word, a May 19 show planned in collaboration with the Oregon Poetry Association, meant to “amplify voices of dissent, resistance and hope.”
Black says that the Reser Center has refunded ticketholders for the shows, but encourages anyone who has not yet received one to reach out to ensure it is processed.
“More than anything, sorry is not the right word, but we’re sorry for the programming that community isn’t going to get, and absolutely sorry that we are unable to support the individual artists who made all of this happen,” she says. “That’s the sad part of it, at least for the board.”
