An inaugural, intimate listening experience is kicking off at the Open Arts Center in Bend, offering audience members the opportunity to get a glimpse behind the curtain at the musicians and creative processes behind their music.
Maija Kellner-Rode, one of OAC’s co-founders and its creative director, said The Gallery Sessions will feature performances and live question-and-answer sessions with the musicians. Additionally, a teen music pilot program will run in parallel with the series, which is slated for specific Fridays between October 2026 and March 2027. Concerts include Rooster Blackspur with Bella Cooper on Oct. 16; Joel Chadd and Sturtz on Nov. 13; local band Sun Dive with Travis Ehrenstrom on Dec. 11; Nathaniel Talbot on Feb. 19; and Alicia Viani and Beth Wood on March 12. Tickets are $15-$35 per show, and a season pass is $90-$210.
“There are not a lot of places where you can actually go and have a sit-down listening experience that isn’t the Tower Theatre. Most often, musicians are playing in front of crowds at bars or cafes, and there’s not as much of that really intentional listening experience,” Kellner-Rode said. “Also, audiences aren’t often able to get to know the artists behind the music that they love. We’re setting it up in a way where there’ll be a select numbers of questions that will be asked to every musician at every show, and then there’ll also be the ability for the audience to ask their own questions, so that’ll be more organic.”
The idea of the music series evolved after a “magical” benefit concert in January, Kellner-Rode said. The concert featured performances by OAC board members and was a “songwriters-in-the-round event” that more than 100 people attended. The concert’s format was so well received that Kellner-Rode and Claire Brislin, the other OAC co-founder and programs director, decided to leverage it into a series that would be open to the community.
“It was this really magical listening experience where we got to know each artist as they performed. It was a really intimate and special evening,” Kellner-Rode said. OAC is partnering with Cascade School of Music to create the teen program that will offer a select number of young people the opportunity to participate in a singer/songwriter workshop series.
“We want to create an experience that not only gives musicians this intimate and unique concert experience but also wanted to give teens the experience to be able to develop stage presence and work in front of a crowd and really empower them that there’s a future for them if they want to be a working musician,” Kellner-Rode said.
Kellner-Rode, 35, has been a “working artist my whole adult life,” and also has a background in teen mentorship and mental health, while Brislin, 40, is a longtime teacher, dancer and performer. The two women met by chance in 2023, when Kellner-Rode was on an artists’ panel at an event Brislin attended. Kellner-Rode and Brislin continued talking long after the panel discussion ended, discovering they had similar dreams of a community arts hub where teens and adults alike could pursue creation.
“We both had this shared vision and connection and immediately said, ‘OK, we’re doing this.’ It felt like a very magical meeting,” Kellner-Rode said. “We both showed up to the equation with different skill sets. We both had been working toward some vision of this and then, through our shared vision, and obviously having been influenced by many others, we’ve now got this whole ecosystem of arts. It’s really meant to be a space for the community. We wanted a real home for arts for adults in our community. There are so many creative people here, but there isn’t really a hub.”
Long-term, Kellner-Rode said they have big plans, building off the new music series.
“It’s our inaugural series, but we really see it being a staple in our programming and something that we will continue to evolve and build,” she said. “This one is mostly oriented towards singers and songwriters. We see it as something that could grow into different genres, and our dream is to have some bigger performers who may be playing at, say, Tower [Theatre] or at Hayden Homes [Amphitheater], and they want to have a more intimate listening session tacked on to their tour, where you really get to know the artists behind the music.”
In other OAC news, the organization recently received an Oregon Arts Commission Arts Learning grant, which is dedicated to strengthening K-12 arts education. The OAC is one of 15 statewide organizations that received the $10,000 grants and will use it to support equitable access to arts education for students at Bear Creek Elementary, a bilingual Title I school that recently lost dedicated arts instruction. The OAC will partner with educators to provide three sequential six-week artist residencies during the 2026-2027 school year, engaging approximately 75-90 students in hands-on visual, performing and interdisciplinary arts experiences led by professional teaching artists, culminating with public showcases of student learning.
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